18. Do Not Play With Daggers

The services were over. The Ataman had returned to his palace. The heat was oppressive, the sun blinding with its light. The sky was a great vault of blue.

Nevertheless, some black clouds, coming from the west, could be seen on the horizon.

“We shall have a great storm this afternoon,” said the Ataman.

He was standing on a terrace which surrounded the court of the garden; he spoke these words with so much anxiety, that a Russian lord, his last guest, a middle-aged man with a yellow beard, could not help showing his surprise.

“Every Christian ought to tremble,” continued the Ataman, crossing himself, “when God speaks in thunder.”

“God will bring us safe and sound out of these storms and all others,” answered the Russian lord. “I confess, however, that those black clouds look threatening.”

“Very threatening, indeed,” answered the Ataman.

They were approaching with the rapidity of vessels driven by the tempest.

The Ataman pressed his forehead with his hand as if he felt unutterable pain. The presence of his guest, the scrutiny of which he felt himself the object, annoyed him. If the Russian could read his thoughts. Alas! Alas! what would he see there? Confusion, indecision, bitter regrets.

What to do? How to decide? Why had God made him the chief of his people in such trying times? How to escape from the clutch of the Russian Eagle? And if he must submit to this insult, would he, by showing that he bore it with horror, lose even the fruits of his weakness and treason? The elegant Russian lord read the face of the ponderous Ataman as if it had been a book. The fox was playing with the elephant.

Suddenly the cloudy countenance of the Ataman brightened like that of a child who discovers a new plaything at his feet. He had just seen an aged beggar, accompanied by a little child, coming up the path which led to the terrace. The beggar had a théorbe. He was a singer. The diversion came at the right time for this apathetic character.

“These people know songs which I prefer to all our concerts,” said the Ataman, addressing himself to his guest, who was watching him.

He motioned to a Cossack, giving him the order to let the old singer and his little girl approach nearer.

“Will the great Ataman deign to hear me?” said the old man, accompanying his request with such a respectful look that it was equivalent to the humblest bow.

The goodness of the Ataman went so far as to point out, with his plump white hand, a place at the corner of the terrace, where the singer could seat himself.