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Updated: May 7, 2025
The habits of that one had been different: all his ways were not the same. For instance, that Malek-Adel had looked round and given a faint neigh every time Tchertop-hanov went into the stable; while this one went on munching hay as though nothing had happened, or dozed with his head bent.
His head was heavy, his blood pulsed in thuds in his throat and ears, but he went on steadily, and knew where he was going. He had made up his mind to kill Malek-Adel; he had thought of nothing else the whole day.... Now he had made up his mind! He went out to do this thing not only calmly, but confidently, unhesitatingly, as a man going about something from a sense of duty.
Perfishka rushed up to his master, and, holding the stirrup, would have helped him to dismount, but the latter got off alone, and with a triumphant glance about him, cried in a loud voice: 'I said I would find Malek-Adel, and I have found him in spite of my enemies, and of Fate itself! Perfishka went up to kiss his hand, but Tchertop-hanov paid no attention to his servant's devotion.
I remembered a picture hanging in our drawing-room Malek-Adel bearing away Matilda but at that point my attention was absorbed by the appearance of a speckled woodpecker who climbed busily up the slender stem of a birch-tree and peeped out uneasily from behind it, first to the right, then to the left, like a musician behind the bass-viol.
Well, money's a thing one may get again, but the great thing is, I've Malek-Adel back again! I'm happy now I'm going to enjoy myself in peace. And I've one instruction to give you, Perfishka: if ever you, which God forbid, catch sight of the Cossack in this neighbourhood, run the very minute without saying a word, and bring me my gun, and I shall know what to do!
Covered with foam, his sides lashed unmercifully, Malek-Adel galloped home, and Tchertop-hanov at once locked himself into his room. 'No, it's not he; it's not my darling! He would have broken his neck before he would have betrayed me! What finally 'did for, as they say, Tchertop-hanov was the following circumstance.
Tchertop-hanov himself what more can we say? with his own hands plaited his favourite's forelocks and mane, and washed his tail with beer, and even, more than once, rubbed his hoofs with polish. Sometimes he would mount Malek-Adel and ride out, not to see his neighbours he avoided them, as of old but across their lands, past their homesteads... for them, poor fools, to admire him from a distance!
One day he sauntered, riding on Malek-Adel, about the back-yards of the priest's quarters round about the church of the parish in which is Bezsonovo. Huddled up, with his Cossack fur cap pulled down over his eyes, and his hands hanging loose on the saddle-bow, he jogged slowly on, a vague discontent in his heart. Suddenly someone called him.
And see the ends of the uprights sticking out of the ground; that means someone has pulled them out. Tchertop-hanov ran up with the lantern, moved it about over the ground.... 'Hoofs, hoofs, prints of horse-shoes, fresh prints! he muttered, speaking hurriedly. They took him through here, through here! He instantly leaped over the fence, and with a shout, 'Malek-Adel!
Tchertop-hanov sat facing the window while he told his story, and smoked a pipe with a long tube while Perfishka stood in the doorway, his hands behind his back, and, respectfully contemplating the back of his master's head, heard him relate how, after many fruitless efforts and idle expeditions, Panteley Eremyitch had at last come to the fair at Romyon by himself, without the Jew Leyba, who, through weakness of character, had not persevered, but had deserted him; how, on the fifth day, when he was on the point of leaving, he walked for the last time along the rows of carts, and all at once he saw between three other horses fastened to the railings he saw Malek-Adel!
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