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Updated: May 8, 2025
As they walked down the straggling village-street the Moscow doctor told the starosta in no measured terms, as was his wont, wherein lay the heart of the sickness. Here, as in Osterno, dirt and neglect were at the base of all the trouble. Here, as in the larger village, the houses were more like the abode of four-footed beasts than the dwellings of human beings.
Had the village of Osterno possessed the liveliness of a Spanish hamlet, the sound of voices and laughter could not have reached the castle perched high up on the rock above. But Osterno was asleep: the castle servants had long gone to rest, and the great silence of Russia wrapped its wings over all.
Good-night." She rose and concealed a simulated yawn. De Chauxville looked at her with his sinister smile, and Etta suddenly saw the resemblance which Paul had noted between this man and the grinning mask of the lynx in the smoking-room at Osterno. "When?" repeated he. Etta shrugged her shoulders. "I wish to speak to you about the Charity League," said De Chauxville. Etta's eyes dilated.
The sun had set in a pink haze which was now turning to an unhealthy gray, and spreading over the face of the western sky like the shadow of death across the human countenance. The starosta shook his head forebodingly. It was cholera weather. Cholera had come to Osterno. Had come, the starosta thought, to stay.
"You must leave Osterno," she urged earnestly; "it is unsafe to delay even a few hours. M. de Chauxville said there would be no danger. I believed him then, but I do not now. Besides, I know the peasants. They are hard to rouse, but once excited they are uncontrollable. They are afraid of nothing. You must get away to-night." Paul made no answer.
"A lenient master," pursued the Frenchman, whose vanity was tickled by the word. "I do not ask much. One thing is to be invited to Osterno, that I may be near you. The other is a humble request for details of your daily life, that I may think of you when absent." Etta drew in her lips, moistening them as if they had suddenly become parched. De Chauxville glanced at her and moved toward the door.
Moreover he battled successfully, and before the moon was well up drew rein outside the village of Osterno, to accede at last to the oft-repeated prayer of the driver that he might return to his task. "It is not meet," the man had gruffly said, whenever a short halt was made to change horses, "that a great prince should drive a yemschik."
Closed sleighs from Osterno were awaiting them. A luxurious breakfast was prepared at the hotel. Relays of horses were posted along the road. The journey to Osterno had been carefully planned and arranged by Steinmetz a king among organizers. The sleigh drive across the steppe was to be accomplished in ten hours. The snow had begun to fall as they clattered across the floating bridge of Tver.
The starosta spread out his thin hands in deprecation. He cringed a little as he stood. He had Jewish blood in his veins, which, while it raised him above his fellows in Osterno, carried with it the usual tendency to cringe. It is in the blood; it is part of what the people who stood without Pilate's palace took upon themselves and upon their children.
Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they never see. Ask the "starost" the mayor of the village. He knows the bárins, and hates them. Michael Roon, the starosta or elder of Osterno, president of the Mir, or village council, principal shopkeeper, mayor and only intelligent soul of the nine hundred, probably had Tartar blood in his veins.
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