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Updated: June 13, 2025
In the sepulchral incense-laden dusk of the uncouth Church, in the religious gloom punctuated by the pervasive twinkle of a thousand hanging lamps of silver, was wedged and blent a suffocating mass of palm-bearing humanity of all nations and races, the sumptuously clothed and the ragged, the hale and the unsightly; the rainbow colors of the East relieved by the white of the shrouded females, toned down by the sombre shabbiness of the Russian moujiks and peasant-women, and pierced by a vivid circular line of red fezzes on the unbared, unreverential heads of the Turkish regiment keeping order among the jostling jealousies of Christendom, whose rival churches swarm around the strange, glittering, candle-illumined Rotunda that covers the tomb of Christ.
Had anyone but Loris been in command, the house of the beloved and honored Rabbi might have been spared, for his many acts of kindness had endeared him to the moujiks as well as to his own people. When Loris arrived before the humble dwelling, however, there was but one sentiment in his heart revenge.
I exclaimed, startled for the moment out of the inertness that paralyzed my brain. "He was murdered a week after he returned to Zostrov. There was trouble with the moujiks, as I knew there would be. The garrison at the castle was helpless, and there was trouble there also, first about my little bomb that covered our retreat. You knew I planned that, hein?" "No, but I suspected it."
The moujiks are getting dangerous. They will not speak to me. I am suspected. I am watched." His shifty eyes, like black beads, flitted from side to side as he spoke. He was like a weasel at bay. It was the face of a man who went in bodily fear. "I will go with you down to the village now," said Paul. "Is there any excuse any illness?"
And with that he sent heralds throughout the kingdom to announce the news, and to ask if there were none among the common folk, the moujiks, the simple folk like us, who would put his hand to the work of rescuing the three lovely princesses, since not one of the boyars and wise men was willing to do it.
The first day I passed at his house, peace had just been proclaimed with England; it was a Sunday; and in his garden, which was on that day opened to all comers, we saw a great number of these long-bearded merchants, who keep up in Russia the costume of the Moujiks, that is to say of the peasants.
On weekdays the moujiks were for the greater part in the fields hard at work, while on Sunday they were free to take part in the plunder and destruction. The seventh was a sad day for our friends. It was the Sabbath, the last that many of them would live to celebrate. The synagogues were filled to overflowing with weeping women and terror-stricken men. There was no hope, no consolation anywhere.
We do not share any of his too-modern ideas, and there were many discussions on the duty of soldiers at the time of the massacres. I reproached him with being as womanish as we were in going down on his knees to the general behind Natacha and me, when it became necessary to kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia. It was not his role. A soldier is a soldier.
All sorts of people wanted their children to be taught Russian without a moment's delay. I do not remember that they wanted to learn it themselves; but they felt an extreme need that their offspring should hereafter be able to converse with moujiks about ikons and the Little Father and anything else if there were anything else that moujiks cared about. This need, however, is not felt now.
You are only an American who has come to help the prince while away his time of exile by trying to turn the Zostrov moujiks into good farmers. That, in itself, is a form of madness, of course, but doubtless they think it may keep him out of more dangerous mischief." "Who are 'they'? I wish you'd be a bit more explicit," I remonstrated. He did make me angry sometimes.
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