was approaching hurriedly, and, thirty-six miles from Bugulminszka, the two forces met in a Cossack village.  General Karr was quite astonished to find, instead of an imagined mob, a disciplined army divided into proper detachments, and provided with guns.  Freymann advised him, as he had sent away the trusted squadron of Csernicseff, not to commence operations now with the cavalry, to take the village as the basis of his operations, and to use his infantry against the rebels.  A series of surprises then befell Karr.  He saw the despised rowdy crowd approaching with drawn sabres, he saw the coolness with which they came on in the face of the fiercest musketry fire.  He saw the headlong desperation with which they rushed upon his secure position.  He recognized that he had found here heroes instead of thieves.  But what annoyed him most was that this rabble knew so well how to handle their cannon; for in St. Petersburg, out of precaution, Cossacks are not enlisted in the artillery, in order that no one should teach them how to serve guns.  And here this ignorant people handled the guns, stolen but yesterday, as though accustomed to them all their lifetime, and their shells had already set fire to villages in many different places.  The General ordered his entire line to advance with a rush, while with the reserve he sharply attacked the enemy in flank, totally defeating them.  His cavalry started with drawn swords towards the fire-spurting space.  Amongst the 1,500 horsemen there were only 300 Cossacks, and in the heat of battle these deserted to the enemy.  Immediately General Karr saw this, he became so alarmed that he set his soldiers the example of flight.  All discipline at an end, they abandoned their comrades in front, and escaped as best they could.

Pugasceff’s Cossacks pursued the Russians for a distance of thirty miles, but did not succeed in overtaking the General.  Fear lent him wings.  Arrived at Bugulminszka, he learned that Csernicseff’s horsemen had been destroyed, that the Body Guard in his own rear had been taken prisoners, and that twenty-one guns had fallen into the hands of the rebels.  Upon hearing this bad news he was seized with such a bad attack of the grippe that they wrapped him up in pillows and sent him home by sledge to St. Petersburg, where the four-handed card-party awaited him, and that very night he had the misfortune to lose his XXI. [Footnote:  The card next to the highest in tarok.]; upon which the Czarina made the bon mot that Karr allowed himself twice to lose his XXI. (referring to twenty-one guns), which bon mot caused great merriment at the Russian Court.

After this victory, Pugasceff’s star (if a demon may be said to possess one) attained its meridian.  Perhaps it might have risen yet higher had he remained faithful to his gigantic missions, and had he not forgotten the two passions which had led him on with such astonishing rapidity—­ the one being to make the Czarina his wife, the other, to crush the Russian aristocracy.  Which of these two ideas was the boldest?  He was only separated from their realization by a transparent film.