Short Fiction by Xavier de Maistre (digital e reader txt) 📕

of replying, examined her clothes, and took off her boots. The man brought a light: both searched the bag containing the passport; they obliged her to open her hands, and when they found all fruitless, they descended and left the poor girl more dead than alive.

This terrifying scene, and the dread of what might follow, prevented her for some time from closing her eyes: but when she became assured by the snoring of her hosts, that they were asleep, she recovered by degrees her usual tranquillity of mind, and her lassitude being probably greater than the fears which still agitated her, she fell at last into a tranquil sleep. It was late in the morning when the hostess awoke her. Prascovia left the stove, and could not help being astonished at the composure and seeming benevolence of both her hosts. Yet she would gladly have left them immediately; but they begged her to eat something, before she continued her journey. The woman set herself to work, and showed far more activity than on the preceding evening. She took out of the oven a pot of soup, with salt meat and cabbage, of which she presented to Prascovia a plentiful portion: her husband was not less prompt, and descending into a sort of cellar, beneath the floor, and covered with a trap-door, brought up a bucket of kvass (a liquor made of wheat-flour), and offered her a full pitcher. Somewhat tranquillized by these attentions, she replied readily to their inquiries, and told them a part of her story. They seemed to take interest in her situation; and, anxious to apologise for their previous behaviour, they protested that they had no other reason for inquiring whether she had money, than because they suspected that she was a thief. She would see, added they, by examining her bag, that, as to themselves, there was no cause to doubt their honesty. Prascovia, on taking leave, was not quite sure what to think of them, but was glad to bid them farewell.

When she had got a few miles, on her way from the village, she counted her money; and the reader will conceive her astonishment, when she found it increased. Her hosts had added forty kopecks.

Prascovia was fain to mention this example of God’s power, to touch the heart of the wicked with charity and compassion.

Shortly afterwards, she met with another accident, which alarmed her not a little. Having one day a long distance to walk, before she could reach any inhabited place, she set out at two o’clock in the morning. When she arrived at the outskirts of the village, a number of curs attacked her, and became more and more infuriated against her, as she ran to escape from them, and endeavoured to defend herself with her staff. One dog seized her garment and tore it; another flew at her face, while she was kneeling and praying. “I thought,” said she, “that He who had saved me from tempest and human wickedness, would not abandon me, in this new danger: and my reliance on His protection was rewarded; for a villager came and frightened away the dogs.”

The winter was fast setting in, and Prascovia was detained for a week in a village by the snow, which fell in such quantities that it was impossible to travel on foot: and when the road became fit for sledges, she got ready to continue her journey; but the good people, who had received her under their roof, represented the fatigues of it to be such as the most robust men would be unable to support; for when the wind blows up the snow, the beaten paths become invisible, and the traveller is lost in a frozen wilderness. Happily for our pilgrim, a caravan of sleds, carrying provisions to Yekaterinburg24 for Christmas-day, arrived at the village. She obtained a seat in one of these vehicles. Yet, notwithstanding the care which the kindhearted drivers took of her, she was ill-protected by her clothes against the severe cold, though she enveloped herself in one of the mats appropriated to the cover of the wares. The cold became so intense, on the fourth day, that when the caravan halted, the poor girl could not rise from the sled. She was carried to a sort of inn, at thirty versts distant from any village, and where the relays for messengers and travellers were kept. One of her cheeks was frostbitten. A fellow-traveller hastened to rub it with snow, and all of them were anxious to assist her; but they refused to convey her farther, because they considered it too dangerous for her to travel in such severe cold, which might yet increase, without better clothing than she was provided with. The poor girl wept bitterly, when she reflected that she probably could not meet again with such a good opportunity, and such kind people. The innkeeper seemed, besides, not at all inclined to receive her, and advised her to continue with the company with whom she had arrived. The drivers, seeing her distress, resolved to buy her a pelisse of sheepskin, which, in that part of Russia, costs but five roubles; and each one offered to contribute his mite for that purpose. But unfortunately there was no merchant to sell a pelisse, and none of the inmates of the kharstma (the inn) was willing to part with his own, for fear he should be obliged to wait too long for an opportunity of procuring another. In this perplexity, one among the youngest of the drivers, proposed that they should alternately lend her their pelisses, or that he would give her his own, if his comrades would each, by turns, part with his for a given time. The suggestion was received with loud applause; and a calculation was quickly made of the distance, and the number of times that the pelisses were to be changed. A Russian peasant likes to know what is expected from him, and