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The Jumpers, or sopouny, founded by one Petroff, considered it their duty to blow upon one another during Divine Service. This arose from a misinterpretation of the ninth verse of the fortieth psalm. It was also their custom to pile benches one upon another and pray from the top of them, until some hysterical female fell to the ground in a religious paroxysm.
"I was accidentally in the room with my friends Akim and Petroff when the police entered." The president waved his hand impatiently. "That of course," he said. "Your name is Godfrey Bullen?" "Yes, sir." "Born in St. Petersburg, but of English parentage?" Godfrey bowed his head.
The entertainment was held in a large room in a traktar or eating-house in a small street. The room was already full of smoke, a number of young men were seated along two tables extending the length of the room, and crossed by one at the upper end. Several were in military uniform, and two or three in that of the navy. Akim and Petroff were greeted boisterously by name as they entered.
Numbers of bottles were ranged down the middle of the tables, which were of bare wood without cloth. These contained, as Petroff told him, wines from various parts of Russia. There were wines similar to sherry and Bordeaux, from the Crimea; Kahetinskoe, strongly resembling good burgundy, from the Caucasus; and Don Skoe, a sparkling wine resembling champagne, from the Don.
"Oh, Dobri," said Marika, as in an angle of the inn-yard she bade her husband farewell, "don't forget the Saviour Jesus our one hope on earth." "God bless you, Marika; I'll never forget you," returned Petroff, straining his young wife to his heart. He had already parted from the children.
Although born in a land where tyranny prevailed, where noble spirits were crushed, independence destroyed, and the people generally debased, there was an occasional glance in the black eye of Dobri Petroff which told of superior intelligence, a certain air of natural refinement, and a strong power of will. "No, Dobri, no; not a rouble less," repeated the shopman.
In an instant he glided to his side, laid his hand on his mouth, and whispered "Gotsuchakoff, be still for your life! I am Dobri Petroff. Do you understand?" He looked close to the sergeant's eyes, and saw that he was understood. At once he removed his hand, and untied the belt which fastened the sergeant's feet.
Akim made no answer, but Godfrey replied for him. "No doubt you will in time, Petroff; but you see liberties like these do not grow up in a day. We had serfs and vassals in England at one time, and feudal barons who could do pretty much what they chose, and it was only in the course of centuries that these things got done away with." At this moment there was a knock at the door.
The doctor gently assisted him. "See," he said, "take this to Dobri Petroff the scout. You know him? Every one knows dashing Dobri!" "I know him. Well?" "Tell him to give it to her he knows who and and say it has kept me in in heaven when sometimes it seemed to me as if I had got into hell."
I had never broken any regulations, never spoken to a political prisoner when in the hospital except to ask him medical questions, and had never opened my lips on politics to a soul there." "I think perhaps I can enlighten you," Godfrey said; and he related to him the attempt to blow up the emperor at the Winter Palace, and the fate of Petroff Stepanoff and Akim Soushiloff.
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