Short Fiction, Xavier de Maistre [books to read in your 20s txt] 📗

is never culpable in the eyes of his children, and mine is innocent.”

Though she could not but observe the enthusiasm she inspired, in the unconscious display of the noble qualities of her soul, it had no influence on her behaviour or language; and, when she touched upon her history, she seemed but to answer queries, and never betrayed an intention of exciting the sympathy of her hearers. She wondered that her conduct should be praised, and she could not conceal her displeasure, when she was commended in exaggerated terms.

She spent the time she was obliged to remain in the capital, in the expectation of the final sentence of her father’s trial, very happily. Every enjoyment was new to her and delicious. The manner in which she expressed her emotions, on these occasions, was often very striking.

Accompanying, one day, the Countess W. through the interior of the Imperial palace, she exclaimed, on seeing the throne: “Is this the throne of the Emperor? oh! how I once dreaded to appear before it!” and, crossing her hands and turning pale, she whispered in a faltering voice: “Is this really the throne of the Emperor?” The awe, the fear, the reverence, with which this image of sovereign power had once filled her, were now blended with feelings of love and gratitude for the Monarch. She asked permission to approach the Imperial seat. With a trembling step she advanced towards it; and, throwing herself at the foot of it, she burst into tears, exclaiming: “Oh! my father, see where the omnipotence of God has conducted me. God, merciful God, bless this seat and him who occupies it! May he, through his whole life, be as happy as I now am.” She could with difficulty be induced to leave this room, and such was her emotion, that her friends found it necessary to defer showing her the rest of the palace, to some other day. She did not recognise the rooms where she had been presented to the Imperial family. When she entered the splendid assembly room of the Knights of St. George, she thought she was in a chapel, and crossed herself.

On the day her friends accompanied her through the Hermitage, she seemed to take great pleasure in looking at the pictures, with which this splendid palace is decorated, and she explained readily the religious subjects of some of them. But seeing a drunken Silenus supported by Bacchantes and Satyrs⁠—a picture of Luca Giordano⁠—she said: “What an ugly thing! what does this represent?” Having never heard of mythology, it was difficult to make her understand the subject of the picture. But when she was told, that it was a fable, she said: “I thought that there was no truth in it: men with goats’ feet! what folly to paint things that never have existed, as if there were a want of true ones.” Poor Prascovia was doomed to learn, at the age of twenty-one, what commonly is taught to children. However, her curiosity was never indiscreet; she seldom asked a question, and endeavoured, by her own efforts, to satisfy herself, about whatever fell under her observation, that was new or that she did not understand.

Nothing gave her more pleasure than to be with well-informed persons, who conversed among themselves, without thinking of her. Her eyes wandered then from one speaker to another; and the attention with which she listened was so intense, that she could remember every remark, which the limited extent of her acquirements enabled her to comprehend.

In the company of her intimate friends, she loved to dwell on the benevolent reception of the two Empresses, and to repeat every word they had honoured her with. Her emotion could not but increase, on hearing many other examples of the magnanimity and goodness of her sovereigns, and she wondered that they were not the usual topic of conversation.

The ukaze for the recall of her father was delayed, however, longer than she had expected. Pascovia had not forgotten the two prisoners, who had offered to assist her. But when she mentioned them to her protectors, they advised her not to embarrass the success of her principal request, by asking this additional favour; and for fear of injuring the interests of her parents, she was obliged to yield. But her good intentions prevailed at last; for on the day that the ukaze for the pardon of her father was to be despatched to the Governor of Siberia, the Emperor, in ordering his minister to congratulate Prascovia, directed him to ask her, at the same time, if she had no favour to solicit for herself. She answered immediately, that the only additional boon she desired, was the liberty of two of her father’s fellow sufferers. Her wish was complied with, and together with the ukaze, which set her father at liberty, was sent that for the recall of her two friends, who thus obtained their liberty, in return for the offer of a few kopecks.

Nothing now prevented Prascovia from making her long intended pilgrimage to the cathedral of Kiev; and in meditating on the last incidents of her life, she determined definitively to give herself up entirely to her religious duties. While she prepared herself for her new career, and went through the preparations for the monastic vow, her father enjoyed the liberty she had procured him. He received the joyful tidings twenty months after her departure. By an inexplicable mishap, he had heard nothing of her during that whole time. The Emperor Alexander had, in that interval, ascended the imperial throne, and on that occasion many prisoners were liberated, but none of those exiled at Ischim. Lopouloff and his wife felt so much the more discouraged. The separation from their only child had brought them to the brink of despair, when suddenly a messenger from the Governor of Tobolsk arrived with the ukaze of their liberty, a passport for their journey to Russia, and a sum of money.

This event,