“To your places!” cried Dubrovsky.
And each robber went to his appointed place. Just then three lookouts came running to the gate. Dubrovsky went to meet them.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Soldiers in the forest,” they replied. “They’re surrounding us.”
Dubrovsky ordered the gates locked and went himself to examine the little cannon. From the forest came the sound of several voices, and they began to approach; the robbers waited in silence. Suddenly three or four soldiers emerged from the forest and at once fell back, firing shots to signal their comrades.
“Prepare to fight,” said Dubrovsky.
There was a stir among the robbers, after which everything fell silent again. Then they heard the noise of the approaching detachment, weapons gleamed among the trees, some hundred and fifty soldiers poured out of the forest and, shouting loudly, rushed towards the rampart. Dubrovsky touched off the fuse, the shot was lucky: one man had his head blown off, two more were wounded. There was confusion among the soldiers, but the officer threw himself forward, the soldiers followed him and ran down into the ditch. The robbers fired at them with rifles and pistols, and, with axes in their hands, began to defend the rampart, which the enraged soldiers attacked, leaving twenty wounded comrades in the ditch. Hand-to-hand combat began, the soldiers were already on the rampart, the robbers were beginning to fall back, but Dubrovsky, walking up to the officer, put a pistol to his chest and fired. The officer went crashing on his back. Several soldiers picked him up and quickly carried him into the forest; the rest, left without a leader, stopped. The encouraged robbers took advantage of this moment of bewilderment, overran them and drove them into the ditch. The besiegers fled, the robbers, shouting loudly, rushed after them. The victory was assured. Dubrovsky, trusting in the complete discomfiture of the enemy, stopped his men and shut himself up in the fortress, commanding the wounded to be brought in, doubling the sentries, and ordering that nobody leave.
The latest events attracted the government’s attention to Dubrovsky’s daring brigandage in earnest. Information was gathered concerning his whereabouts. A company of soldiers was sent to take him dead or alive. They caught several men from his band and learned from them that Dubrovsky was no longer among them. A few days after [the battle]*10 he had gathered all his companions, announced to them that he intended to leave them forever, and advised them to change their way of life.
“You’ve grown rich under my leadership, each of you has documents with which you can safely make your way to some remote province and there spend the rest of your lives in honest labor and abundance. But you’re all rascals and probably won’t want to abandon your trade.”
After that speech he left them, taking only * * * with him. No one knew where he had disappeared to. At first the truth of this testimony was doubted: the robbers’ devotion to their chief was well known. It was supposed that they were trying to protect him. But subsequent events bore them out: the terrible visits, arsons, and robberies ceased. The roads became clear. From other sources it was learned that Dubrovsky had escaped abroad.
*1 “What does monsieur wish?”
*2 I.e., Je veux, moi, chez vous coucher [“I want, me, to sleep in your room”].
*3 “Very gladly, monsieur…Please give orders to that effect.”
*4 Pourquoi vous snuffez, pourquoi vous snuffez? [“Why do you snuff it, why do you snuff it?”]
*5 sleep
*6 Monsieur, monsieur…je veux avec vous parler [“Monsieur, monsieur…I want with you to talk”].
*7 Qu’est-ce que c’est, monsieur, qu’est-ce que c’est? [“What is this, monsieur, what is this?”]
*8 with the ouchitels [Russian for “tutors”]
*9 all the expenses (French)
*10 There is a gap here in the original manuscript. Translator.
The Queen of Spades
The queen of spades signifies secret malevolence.
THE LATEST FORTUNETELLING BOOK
I
In nasty weather
They would all get together
And play;
On the table now fifty
Or, God help them, twice fifty
They’d lay,
And whenever they won,
They chalked up the sum
On a slate.
So in nasty weather
Quite busy together
They played.1
Once they were playing cards at the horse guard Narumov’s. The long winter night passed unnoticed; they sat down to supper towards five in the morning. Those who came out winners ate with great appetite; the others sat absently before their empty plates. But champagne appeared, the conversation grew lively, and they all took part in it.
“How did you do, Surin?” asked the host.
“Lost, as usual. I must confess, I’m unlucky: I play mirandole,2 never get excited, nothing throws me off, and yet I keep losing!”
“And you weren’t tempted even once? You never once staked en routé?…I find your firmness astonishing.”
“What about Hermann?” said one of the guests, pointing to the young engineer. “He’s never held cards in his life, never bent down a single paroli in his life, yet he sits with us and watches us play till five in the morning.”
“The game interests me greatly,” said Hermann, “but I am not in a position to sacrifice the necessary in hopes of acquiring the superfluous.”
“Hermann is a German: he’s calculating, that’s all!” Tomsky observed. “But if there’s anyone I don’t understand, it’s my grandmother, Countess Anna Fedotovna.”
“How? What?” the guests cried.
“I can’t comprehend,” Tomsky went on, “how it is that my grandmother doesn’t punt!”
“What’s so surprising,” said Narumov, “about an eighty-year-old woman not punting?”
“So you know nothing about her?”
“No, nothing at all!”
“Oh, then listen:
“You should know that sixty years ago my grandmother went to Paris and became all the fashion there. People ran after her, to catch a glimpse of la Vénus moscovite; Richelieu3 dangled after her, and my grandmother assures me that he nearly shot himself on account of her cruelty.
“In those days ladies played faro. Once at court she lost quite a lot on credit to the duc d’Orléans. Having come home, my grandmother, while unsticking the beauty spots from her face and untying her farthingales, announced her loss to my grandfather and ordered him to pay.
“My late grandfather, as far as I remember, was a sort of butler to my grandmother. He was mortally afraid of her; however, on hearing of such a terrible loss, he flew into a rage, fetched an abacus, demonstrated to her that in half a year they had spent half a million, that they had no estates near Paris, as they had near Moscow and Saratov, and flatly refused to pay. Grandmother slapped him in the face and went to bed alone as a token of his disgrace.
“The next day she sent for her husband, hoping that the domestic punishment had had an effect on him, but she found him unshakeable. For the first time in her life she stooped to discussions and explanations with him; she hoped to appeal to his conscience, indulgently pointing out to him that there are debts and debts, and there is a difference between a prince and a coach maker. No use! Grandfather was in rebellion. No, and that’s final! Grandmother didn’t know what to do.
“She was closely acquainted with a very remarkable man. You’ve heard of the comte de Saint-Germain, of whom so many wonders are told. You know that he passed himself off as the Wandering Jew, the inventor of the elixir of life and the philosopher’s stone, and so on. He was laughed at as a charlatan, and Casanova in his memoirs says he was a spy;4 however, despite his mysteriousness, Saint-Germain was of very dignified appearance and was very amiable in society. Grandmother still loves him to distraction and gets angry if he is spoken of disrespectfully. Grandmother knew that Saint-Germain could have large sums at his disposal. She decided to resort to him. She wrote him a note and asked him to come to her immediately.