“Come, our father has given orders that the officer be brought in.”

I entered the “izba,” or the palace, as the peasant called it.  It was lighted by two tallow candles, and the walls were hung with gold paper.  All the rest of the furniture, the benches, the table, the little washstand jug hung to a cord, the towel on a nail, the oven fork standing up in a corner, the wooden shelf laden with earthen pots, all was just as in any other “izba.  Pugatchef sat beneath the holy pictures in a red caftan and high cap, his hand on his thigh.  Around him stood several of his principal chiefs, with a forced expression of submission and respect.  It was easy to see that the news of the arrival of an officer from Orenburg had aroused a great curiosity among the rebels, and that they were prepared to receive me in pomp.  Pugatchef recognized me at the first glance.  His feigned gravity disappeared at once.

“Ah! it is your lordship,” said he, with liveliness.  “How are you?  What in heaven’s name brings you here?”

I replied that I had started on a journey on my own business, and that his people had stopped me.

“And on what business?” asked he.

I knew not what to say.  Pugatchef, thinking I did not want to explain myself before witnesses, made a sign to his comrades to go away.  All obeyed except two, who did not offer to stir.

“Speak boldly before these,” said Pugatchef; “hide nothing from them.”

I threw a side glance upon these two confederates of the usurper.  One of them, a little old man, meagre and bent, with a scanty grey beard, had nothing remarkable about him, except a broad blue ribbon worn cross-ways over his caftan of thick grey cloth.  But I shall never forget his companion.  He was tall, powerfully built, and appeared to be about forty-five.  A thick red beard, piercing grey eyes, a nose without nostrils, and marks of the hot iron on his forehead and on his cheeks, gave to his broad face, seamed with small-pox, a strange and indefinable expression.  He wore a red shirt, a Kirghiz dress, and wide Cossack trousers.  The first, as I afterwards learnt, was the deserter, Corporal Beloborodoff.  The other, Athanasius Sokoloff, nicknamed Khlopusha,[63] was a criminal condemned to the mines of Siberia, whence he had escaped three times.  In spite of the feelings which then agitated me, this company wherein I was thus unexpectedly thrown greatly impressed me.  But Pugatchef soon recalled me to myself by his question.

“Speak!  On what business did you leave Orenburg?”

A strange idea occurred to me.  It seemed to me that Providence, in bringing me a second time before Pugatchef, opened to me a way of executing my project.  I resolved to seize the opportunity, and, without considering any longer what course I should pursue, I replied to Pugatchef—­

“I was going to Fort Belogorsk, to deliver there an orphan who is being oppressed.”