I was dumbfounded.  The likeness of Pugatchef to my guide was indeed striking.  I ended by feeling certain that he and Pugatchef were one and the same man, and I then understood why he had shown me mercy.  I was filled with astonishment at the extraordinary connection of events.  A boy’s “touloup,” given to a vagabond, saved my neck from the hangman, and a drunken frequenter of pothouses besieged forts and shook the Empire.

“Will you not eat something?” asked Saveliitch, faithful to his old habits.  “There is nothing in the house, it is true; but I shall look about everywhere, and I will get something ready for you.”

Left alone, I began to reflect.  What could I do?  To stay in the fort, which was now in the hands of the robber, or to join his band were courses alike unworthy of an officer.  Duty prompted me to go where I could still be useful to my country in the critical circumstances in which it was now situated.

But my love urged me no less strongly to stay by Marya Ivanofna, to be her protector and her champion.  Although I foresaw a new and inevitable change in the state of things, yet I could not help trembling as I thought of the dangers of her situation.

My reflections were broken by the arrival of a Cossack, who came running to tell me that the great Tzar summoned me to his presence.

“Where is he?” I asked, hastening to obey.

“In the Commandant’s house,” replied the Cossack.  “After dinner our father went to the bath; now he is resting.  Ah, sir! you can see he is a person of importance—­he deigned at dinner to eat two roast sucking-pigs; and then he went into the upper part of the vapour-bath, where it was so hot that Tarass Kurotchkin himself could not stand it; he passed the broom to Bikbaieff, and only recovered by dint of cold water.  You must agree; his manners are very majestic, and in the bath, they say, he showed his marks of Tzar—­on one of his breasts a double-headed eagle as large as a petak,[58] and on the other his own face.”

I did not think it worth while to contradict the Cossack, and I followed him into the Commandant’s house, trying to imagine beforehand my interview with Pugatchef, and to guess how it would end.

The reader will easily believe me when I say that I did not feel wholly reassured.

It was getting dark when I reached the house of the Commandant.

The gallows, with its victims, stood out black and terrible; the body of the Commandant’s poor wife still lay beneath the porch, close by two Cossacks, who were on guard.

He who had brought me went in to announce my arrival.  He came back almost directly, and ushered me into the room where, the previous evening, I had bidden good-bye to Marya Ivanofna.

I saw a strange scene before me.  At a table covered with a cloth and laden with bottles and glasses was seated Pugatchef, surrounded by ten Cossack chiefs, in high caps and coloured shirts, heated by wine, with flushed faces and sparkling eyes.  I did not see among them the new confederates lately sworn in, the traitor Chvabrine and the “ouriadnik.”