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NIJNI-NOVGOROD, Lower Novgorod, situate at the junction of the Volga and
the Oka, is the chief town in the district of the same name. It was here that
Michael Strogoff was obliged to leave the railway, which at the time did not go
beyond that town. Thus, as he advanced, his traveling would become first less
speedy and then less safe.
Nijni-Novgorod, the fixed population of which is only from thirty to
thirty-five thousand inhabitants, contained at that time more than three
hundred thousand; that is to say, the population was increased tenfold. This
addition was in consequence of the celebrated fair, which was held within the
walls for three weeks. Formerly Makariew had the benefit of this concourse of
traders, but since 1817 the fair had been removed to Nijni-Novgorod.
Even at the late hour at which Michael Strogoff left the platform, there
was still a large number of people in the two towns, separated by the stream of
the Volga, which compose Nijni-Novgorod. The highest of these is built on a
steep rock. and defended by a fort called in Russia “kreml.”
Michael Strogoff expected some trouble in finding a hotel, or even an
inn, to suit him. As he had not to start immediately, for he was going to take
a steamer, he was compelled to look out for some lodging; but, before doing so,
he wished to know exactly the hour at which the steamboat would start. He went
to the office of the company whose boats plied between Nijni-Novgorod and Perm.
There, to his great annoyance, he found that no boat started for Perm till the
following day at twelve o’clock. Seventeen hours to wait! It was very
vexatious to a man so pressed for time. However, he never senselessly murmured.
Besides, the fact was that no other conveyance could take him so quickly either
to Perm or Kasan. It would be better, then, to wait for the steamer, which
would enable him to regain lost time.
Here, then, was Michael Strogoff, strolling through the town and quietly
looking out for some inn in which to pass the night. However, he troubled
himself little on this score, and, but that hunger pressed him, he would
probably have wandered on till morning in the streets of Nijni-Novgorod. He was
looking for supper rather than a bed. But he found both at the sign of the City
of Constantinople. There, the landlord offered him a fairly comfortable room,
with little furniture, it is true, but not without an image of the Virgin, and
a few saints framed in yellow gauze.
A goose filled with sour stuffing swimming in thick cream, barley bread,
some curds, powdered sugar mixed with cinnamon, and a jug of kwass, the
ordinary Russian beer, were placed before him, and sufficed to satisfy his
hunger. He did justice to the meal, which was more than could be said of his
neighbor at table, who, having, in his character of “old believer”
of the sect of Raskalniks, made the vow of abstinence, rejected the potatoes in
front of him, and carefully refrained from putting sugar in his tea.
His supper finished, Michael Strogoff, instead of going up to his
bedroom, again strolled out into the town. But, although the long twilight yet
lingered, the crowd was already dispersing, the streets were gradually becoming
empty, and at length everyone retired to his dwelling.
Why did not Michael Strogoff go quietly to bed, as would have seemed
more reasonable after a long railway journey? Was he thinking of the young
Livonian girl who had been his traveling companion? Having nothing better to
do, he WAS thinking of her. Did he fear that, lost in this busy city, she might
be exposed to insult? He feared so, and with good reason. Did he hope to meet
her, and, if need were, to afford her protection? No. To meet would be
difficult. As to protection—what right had he—
“Alone,” he said to himself, “alone, in the midst of
these wandering tribes! And yet the present dangers are nothing compared to
those she must undergo. Siberia! Irkutsk! I am about to dare all risks for Russia,
for the Czar, while she is about to do so—For whom? For what? She is
authorized to cross the frontier! The country beyond is in revolt! The steppes
are full of Tartar bands!”
Michael Strogoff stopped for an instant, and reflected.
“Without doubt,” thought he, “she must have determined
on undertaking her journey before the invasion. Perhaps she is even now
ignorant of what is happening. But no, that cannot be; the merchants discussed
before her the disturbances in Siberia— and she did not seem surprised. She
did not even ask an explanation. She must have known it then, and knowing it,
is still resolute. Poor girl! Her motive for the journey must be urgent indeed!
But though she may be brave—and she certainly is so—her strength
must fail her, and, to say nothing of dangers and obstacles, she will be unable
to endure the fatigue of such a journey. Never can she reach Irkutsk!”
Indulging in such reflections, Michael Strogoff wandered on as chance
led him; being well acquainted with the town, he knew that he could easily
retrace his steps.
Having strolled on for about an hour, he seated himself on a bench
against the wall of a large wooden cottage, which stood, with many others, on a
vast open space. He had scarcely been there five minutes when a hand was laid
heavily on his shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” roughly demanded a tall and
powerful man, who had approached unperceived.
“I am resting,” replied Michael Strogoff.
“Do you mean to stay all night on the bench?”
“Yes, if I feel inclined to do so,” answered Michael
Strogoff, in a tone somewhat too sharp for the simple merchant he wished to
personate.
“Come forward, then, so I can see you,” said the man.
Michael Strogoff, remembering that, above all, prudence was requisite,
instinctively drew back. “It is not necessary,” he replied, and
calmly stepped back ten paces.
The man seemed, as Michael observed him well, to have the look of a
Bohemian, such as are met at fairs, and with whom contact, either physical or
moral, is unpleasant. Then, as he looked more attentively through the dusk, he
perceived, near the cottage, a large caravan, the usual traveling dwelling of
the Zingaris or gypsies, who swarm in Russia wherever a few copecks can be
obtained.
As the gypsy took two or three steps forward, and was about to
interrogate Michael Strogoff more closely, the door of the cottage opened. He
could just see a woman, who spoke quickly in a language which Michael Strogoff
knew to be a mixture of Mongol and Siberian.
“Another spy! Let him alone, and come to supper. The papluka is
waiting for you.”
Michael Strogoff could not help smiling at the epithet bestowed on him,
dreading spies as he did above all else.
In the same dialect, although his accent was very different, the
Bohemian replied in words which signify, “You are right, Sangarre! Besides,
we start to-morrow.”
“To-morrow?” repeated the woman in surprise.
“Yes, Sangarre,” replied the Bohemian; “to-morrow, and
the Father himself sends us—where we are going!”
Thereupon the man and woman entered the cottage, and carefully closed
the door.
“Good!” said Michael Strogoff, to himself; “if these
gipsies do not wish to be understood when they speak before me, they had better
use some other language.”
From his Siberian origin, and because he had passed his childhood in the
Steppes, Michael Strogoff, it has been said, understood almost all the
languages in usage from Tartary to the Sea of Ice. As to the exact
signification of the words he had heard, he did not trouble his head. For why
should it interest him?
It was already late when he thought of returning to his inn to take some
repose. He followed, as he did so, the course of the Volga, whose waters were
almost hidden under the countless number of boats floating on its bosom.
An hour after, Michael Strogoff was sleeping soundly on one of those
Russian beds which always seem so hard to strangers, and on the morrow, the
17th of July, he awoke at break of day.
He had still five hours to pass in Nijni-Novgorod; it seemed to him an
age. How was he to spend the morning unless in wandering, as he had done the
evening before, through the streets? By the time he had finished his breakfast,
strapped up his bag, had his podorojna inspected at the police office, he would
have nothing to do but start. But he was not a man to lie in bed after the sun
had risen; so he rose, dressed himself, placed the letter with the imperial
arms on it carefully at the bottom of its usual pocket within the lining of his
coat, over which he fastened his belt; he then closed his bag and threw it over
his shoulder. This done, he had no wish to return to the City of
Constantinople, and intending to breakfast on the bank of the Volga near the
wharf, he settled his bill and left the inn. By way of precaution, Michael
Strogoff went first to the office of the steam-packet company, and there made
sure that the Caucasus would start at the appointed hour. As he did so, the
thought for the first time struck him that, since the young Livonian girl was
going to Perm, it was very possible that her intention was also to embark in
the Caucasus, in which case he should accompany her.
The town above with its kremlin, whose circumference measures two
versts, and which resembles that of Moscow, was altogether abandoned. Even the
governor did not reside there. But if the town above was like a city of the
dead, the town below, at all events, was alive.
Michael Strogoff, having crossed the Volga on a bridge of boats, guarded
by mounted Cossacks, reached the square where the evening before he had fallen
in with the gipsy camp. This was somewhat outside the town, where the fair of
Nijni-Novgorod was held. In a vast plain rose the temporary palace of the
governor-general, where by imperial orders that great functionary resided
during the whole of the fair, which, thanks to the people who composed it,
required an ever-watchful surveillance.
This plain was now covered with booths symmetrically arranged in such a
manner as to leave avenues broad enough to allow the crowd to pass without a
crush.
Each group of these booths, of all sizes and shapes, formed a separate
quarter particularly dedicated to some special branch of commerce. There was
the iron quarter, the furriers’ quarter, the woolen quarter, the quarter
of the wood merchants, the weavers’ quarter, the dried fish quarter, etc.
Some booths were even built of fancy materials, some of bricks of tea, others
of masses of salt meat—that is to say, of samples of the goods which the
owners thus announced were there to the purchasers—a singular, and
somewhat American, mode of advertisement.
In the avenues and long alleys there was already a large assemblage of
people—the sun, which had risen at four o’clock, being well above
the horizon—an extraordinary mixture of Europeans and Asiatics, talking,
wrangling, haranguing, and bargaining. Everything which can be bought or sold
seemed to be heaped up in this square. Furs, precious stones, silks, Cashmere
shawls, Turkey carpets, weapons from the Caucasus, gauzes from Smyrna and
Ispahan. Tiflis armor, caravan teas. European bronzes, Swiss clocks, velvets and
silks from Lyons, English cottons, harness, fruits, vegetables, minerals from
the Ural, malachite, lapis-lazuli, spices, perfumes, medicinal herbs, wood,
tar, rope, horn, pumpkins, water-melons, etc— all the products of India,
China, Persia, from the shores of the Caspian and the Black Sea, from America
and Europe, were united at this corner of the globe.
It is scarcely possible truly to portray the moving mass of human beings
surging here and there, the excitement, the confusion, the hubbub; demonstrative
as were the natives and the inferior classes, they were completely outdone by
their visitors. There were merchants from Central Asia, who had occupied a year
in escorting their merchandise across its vast plains, and who would not again
see their shops and counting-houses for another year to come. In short, of such
importance is this fair of Nijni-Novgorod, that the sum total of its
transactions amounts yearly to nearly a hundred million dollars.
On one of the open spaces between the quarters of this temporary city
were numbers of mountebanks of every description; gypsies from the mountains,
telling fortunes to the credulous fools who are ever to be found in such
assemblies; Zingaris or Tsiganes— a name which the Russians give to the
gypsies who are the descendants of the ancient Copts—singing their
wildest melodies and dancing their most original dances; comedians of foreign
theaters, acting Shakespeare, adapted to the taste of spectators who crowded to
witness them. In the long avenues the bear showmen accompanied their
four-footed dancers, menageries resounded with the hoarse cries of animals
under the influence of the stinging whip or red-hot irons of the tamer; and,
besides all these numberless performers, in the middle of the central square,
surrounded by a circle four deep of enthusiastic amateurs, was a band of
“mariners of the Volga,” sitting on the ground, as on the deck of
their vessel, imitating the action of rowing, guided by the stick of the master
of the orchestra, the veritable helmsman of this imaginary vessel! A whimsical
and pleasing custom!
Suddenly, according to a time-honored observance in the fair of
Nijni-Novgorod, above the heads of the vast concourse a flock of birds was
allowed to escape from the cages in which they had been brought to the spot. In
return for a few copecks charitably offered by some good people, the
bird-fanciers opened the prison doors of their captives, who flew out in
hundreds, uttering their joyous notes.
It should be mentioned that England and France, at all events, were this
year represented at the great fair of Nijni-Novgorod by two of the most
distinguished products of modern civilization, Messrs. Harry Blount and Alcide
Jolivet. Jolivet, an optimist by nature, found everything agreeable, and as by
chance both lodging and food were to his taste, he jotted down in his book some
memoranda particularly favorable to the town of Nijni-Novgorod. Blount, on the
contrary, having in vain hunted for a supper, had been obliged to find a
resting-place in the open air. He therefore looked at it all from another point
of view, and was preparing an article of the most withering character against a
town in which the landlords of the inns refused to receive travelers who only
begged leave to be flayed, “morally and physically.”
Michael Strogoff, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his
cherry-stemmed pipe, appeared the most indifferent and least impatient of men;
yet, from a certain contraction of his eyebrows every now and then, a careful
observer would have seen that he was burning to be off.
For two hours he kept walking about the streets, only to find himself
invariably at the fair again. As he passed among the groups of buyers and
sellers he discovered that those who came from countries on the confines of
Asia manifested great uneasiness. Their trade was visibly suffering. Another
symptom also was marked. In Russia military uniforms appear on every occasion.
Soldiers are wont to mix freely with the crowd, the police agents being almost
invariably aided by a number of Cossacks, who, lance on shoulder, keep order in
the crowd of three hundred thousand strangers. But on this occasion the
soldiers, Cossacks and the rest, did not put in an appearance at the great
market. Doubtless, a sudden order to move having been foreseen, they were
restricted to their barracks.
Moreover, while no soldiers were to be seen, it was not so with their
officers. Since the evening before, aides-decamp, leaving the governor’s
palace, galloped in every direction. An unusual movement was going forward
which a serious state of affairs could alone account for. There were
innumerable couriers on the roads both to Wladimir and to the Ural Mountains. The
exchange of telegraphic dispatches with Moscow was incessant.
Michael Strogoff found himself in the central square when the report
spread that the head of police had been summoned by a courier to the palace of
the governor-general. An important dispatch from Moscow, it was said, was the
cause of it.
“The fair is to be closed,” said one.
“The regiment of Nijni-Novgorod has received the route,”
declared another.
“They say that the Tartars menace Tomsk!”
“Here is the head of police!” was shouted on every side. A
loud clapping of hands was suddenly raised, which subsided by degrees, and
finally was succeeded by absolute silence. The head of police arrived in the
middle of the central square, and it was seen by all that he held in his hand a
dispatch.
Then, in a loud voice, he read the following announcements: “By
order of the Governor of Nijni-Novgorod.
“1st. All Russian subjects are forbidden to quit the province upon
any pretext whatsoever.
“2nd. All strangers of Asiatic origin are commanded to leave the
province within twenty-four hours.”
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