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."
