Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

"The sentence read, the magistrate and his assistant left the scaffold.

'Now, then,' said Pugatscheff to the executioner, 'let us have no mistakes; the prescribed order must be strictly observed. So you will first cut off my head – '

'The head first!' cried the executioner.

'So runs the sentence. Have a care! I have friends who would make you dearly expiate an error to my prejudice.'

It was too late to call back the magistrate; and the executioner, who doubted, at last said to himself that the important affair, after all, was the death of the criminal, and that there was little difference whether it took place rather sooner or rather later. He grasped his axe; Pugatscheff laid his head on the block, and the next moment it rebounded upon the scaffold. The feet and hands were cut off after death; the culprit escaping torture by his great presence of mind."

It has been asserted that an order from the empress thus humanised the cruel sentence; but this is exceedingly improbable, for she was bitter against Pugatscheff, who, ignorant Cossack as he was, had made the modern Semiramis tremble on her throne; besides, it is matter of history that, after his execution, the headsman had his tongue cut out, and was sent to Siberia. Catherine, who had affected to laugh at Pugatscheff during his life, was so ungenerous as to calumniate him after death. "This brigand," she said, in one of her letters quoted by M. Blanc, "showed himself so pusillanimous in his prison, that it was necessary to prepare him with caution to hear his sentence read, lest he should die of fear." It is quite certain, M. Blanc observes, that to his dying hour Pugatscheff inspired more fear than he felt.

The misfortunes of the unhappy young Princess Tarrakanoff supply M. Blanc with materials for the most interesting chapter in this volume of his work. The Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, and predecessor of Peter III. – whose marriage with the Princess of Anhalt Zerbest, afterwards Catherine the Great, was brought about by her – had had three children by her secret marriage with Alexis Razumoffski. The youngest of these was a daughter, who was brought up in Russia under the name of the Princess Tarrakanoff. When Catherine trampled the rights of Poland under foot, the Polish prince, Charles Radzivil, carried off the young princess, and took her to Italy, thinking to set her up at some future day as a pretender to the Russian throne. Informed of this, Catherine confiscated his estates; and in order to live, he was compelled to sell the diamonds and other valuables he had taken with him to Italy. These resources exhausted, Radzivil set out for Poland to seek others, leaving the young princess, then in her sixteenth year, at Rome, under the care of a sort of governess or duenna. On reaching his native country he was offered the restoration of his property if he would bring back his ward to Russia. He refused; but he was so base as to promise that he would take no further trouble about her, and leave her to her fate. Catherine pardoned him, and forthwith put Alexis Orloff on the scent. He was a keen bloodhound, she well knew, capable of any villany that might serve his ambition. Gold unlimited was placed at his disposal, and promise of high reward if he discovered the retreat of the princess, and lured her within Catherine's reach. Orloff set out for Italy; and on arriving there he took into his employ a Neapolitan named Ribas, a sort of spy, styling himself a naval officer, who pledged himself to find out the princess, but stipulated for rank in the Russian navy as his reward. M. Blanc asserts that he demanded to be made admiral at once; and that Orloff, afraid, notwithstanding the extensive powers given him, to bestow so high a grade, or compelled by the suspicions of Ribas to produce the commission itself, wrote to Catherine, who at once sent the required document. Whether this be exact or not, more than one historian mentions that Ribas subsequently commanded in the Black Sea as a Russian vice-admiral. When certain of his reward, Ribas, who then had spent two months in researches, revealed the retreat of the unfortunate princess. With some abridgment we will follow M. Blanc, whose narrative agrees, in all the main points, with the most authentic versions of this touching and romantic history.

The princess was at Rome. Abandoned by Radzivil, she was reduced to the greatest penury, existing only by the aid of a woman who had been her servant, and who now served other masters. Alexis Orloff visited her in her miserable abode, and spoke at first in the tone of a devoted slave addressing his sovereign; he told her she was the legitimate empress of Russia; that the entire population of that great empire anxiously longed for her accession; that if Catherine still occupied the throne, it was only because nobody knew where she (the princess) was hidden; and that her appearance amongst her faithful subjects, would be a signal for the instant downfall of the usurper. Notwithstanding her youth, the princess mistrusted these dazzling assurances; she was even alarmed by them, and held herself upon her guard. Then Orloff, one of the handsomest men of his time, joined the seductions of love to those of ambition; he feigned a violent passion for the young girl, and swore that his life depended on his obtaining her heart and hand. The poor isolated girl fell unresistingly into the infamous snare spread for her inexperience: she believed and loved him. The infamous Orloff persuaded her that their marriage must be strictly private, lest Catherine should hear of it and take precautions. In the night he brought to her house a party of mercenaries, some wearing the costumes of priests of the Greek church, others magnificently attired to act as witnesses. The mockery of a marriage enacted, the princess willingly accompanied Alexis Orloff, whom she believed her husband, to Leghorn, where entertainments of all sorts were given to her. The Russian squadron, at anchor off the port, was commanded by the English Admiral Greig. This officer, either the dupe or the accomplice of Orloff, invited the princess to visit the vessels that were soon to be commanded in her name. She accepted, and embarked after a banquet, amidst the acclamations of an immense crowd: the cannon thundered, the sky was bright, every circumstance conspired to give her visit the appearance of a brilliant festival. From her flag-bedecked galley she was hoisted in a splendid arm-chair on board the admiral's vessel, where she was received with the honours due to a crowned head. Until then Orloff had never left her side for an instant. Suddenly the scene changed. Orloff disappeared: in place of the gay and smiling officers who an instant previously had obsequiously bowed before her, the unfortunate victim saw herself surrounded by men of sinister aspect, one of whom announced to her that she was prisoner by order of the Empress Catherine, and that soon she would be brought to trial for the treason she had attempted. The princess thought herself in a dream. With loud cries she summoned her husband to her aid; her guardians laughed in her face, and told her she had had a lover, but no husband, and that her marriage was a farce. Her despair at these terrible revelations amounted to frenzy; she burst into sobs and reproaches, and at last swooned away. They took advantage of her insensibility to put fetters on her feet and hands, and lower her into the hold. A few hours later the squadron sailed for Russia. Notwithstanding her helplessness and entreaties, the poor girl was kept in irons until her arrival at St Petersburg, when she was taken before the empress, who wished to see and question her.

Catherine was old; the Princess Tarrakanoff was but sixteen, and of surpassing beauty; the disparity destroyed her last chance of mercy. But as there was in reality no charge against her, and as her trial might have made too much noise, Catherine, after a long and secret interview with her unfortunate prisoner, gave orders she should be kept in the most rigorous captivity. She was confined in one of the dungeons of a prison near the Neva.

Five years elapsed. The victim of the heartless Catherine, and of the villain Orloff, awaited death as the only relief she could expect; but youth, and a good constitution, struggled energetically against torture and privations. One night, reclining on the straw that served her as a bed, she prayed to God to terminate her sufferings by taking her to himself, when her attention was attracted by a low rumbling noise like the roll of distant thunder. She listened. The noise redoubled: it became an incessant roar, which each moment augmented in power. The poor captive desired death, and yet she felt terror; she called aloud, and implored not to be left alone. A jailer came at her cries; she asked the cause of the noise she heard.

"'Tis nothing," replied the stupid slave; "the Neva overflowing."

"But cannot the water reach us here?"

"It is here already."

At that moment the flood, making its way under the door, poured into the dungeon, and in an instant captive and jailer were over the ankles in water.

"For heaven's sake, let us leave this!" cried the young princess.

"Not without orders; and I have received none."

"But we shall be drowned!"

"That is pretty certain. But without special orders I am not to let you leave this dungeon, under pain of death. In case of unforeseen danger I am to remain with you, and to kill you should rescue be attempted."

"Good God! the water rises. I cannot sustain myself."

The Neva, overflowing its banks, floated enormous blocks of ice, upsetting everything in its passage, and inundating the adjacent country. The water now plashed furiously against the prison doors: the sentinels had been carried away by the torrent, and the other soldiers on guard had taken refuge on the upper floors. Lifted off her feet by the icy flood which still rose higher, the unfortunate captive fell and disappeared; the jailer, who had water to his breast, hung his lamp against the wall, and tried to succour his prisoner; but when he succeeded in raising her up, she was dead! The possibility anticipated by his employers was realised; there had been stress of circumstances, and the princess being dead, he was at liberty to leave the dungeon. Bearing the corpse in his arms, he succeeded in reaching the upper part of the prison.

If we may offer a hint to authors, it is our opinion that this tragical anecdote will be a godsend to some romance-writer of costive invention, and on the outlook for a plot. Very little ingenuity will suffice to spread over the prescribed quantity of foolscap the incidents we have packed into a page. They will dilute very handsomely into three volumes. As to characters, the novelist's work is done to his hand. Here we have the Empress Catherine, vindictive and dissolute, persecuting that "fair girl" the Princess Tarrakanoff, with the assistance of Orloff, the smooth villain, and of the sullen ruffian Ribas. The latter will work up into a sort of Italian Varney, and may be dispersed to the elements by an intentional accident, on board the ship blown up by Orloff's order, for the enlightenment of the painter Hackert. With the exception of the dungeon-scene, we have given but a meagre outline of M. Blanc's narrative; and there are a number of minor characters that may be advantageously brought in and expanded. "This event," says M. Blanc, referring to the kidnapping of the Princess, "caused a strong sensation at Leghorn. Prince Leopold, Grand-duke of Tuscany, complained bitterly of it, and would have had Alexis Orloff arrested; but this vile assassin of Peter III. maintained that he had only executed the orders of his sovereign, who would well know how to justify him. He was supported, in this circumstance, by the English consul, who was his accomplice; and the Grand-duke, seeing he was not likely to be the strongest, suffered the matter to drop." "Some Englishmen," another French writer asserts, "had been so base as to participate in Alexis Orloff's plot; but others were far from approving it. They even blushed to serve under him, and sent in their resignations. Admiral Elphinstone was one of these. Greig was promoted in his place." An Italian prince, indignant, but timid; a foreign consul, sold to Russian interests; a British sailor, spurning the service of a tyrant. We need say no more; for we are quite sure that before they get thus far, the corps of historical novelists will be handling their goose-quills.

LETTERS TO THE REV. CHARLES FUSTIAN,

AN ANGLO-CATHOLIC

LETTER FIRST

You object to being called a Puseyite, or a Tractarian; and as I believe you never read any of the Tracts, nor were lucky enough to comprehend any of Dr Pusey's writings, you are right to decline the names. But it is easy to perceive, even from your outward man, that some great change has taken place upon you. It is not for nothing that you wear so very tight a neckcloth, and so very low-collared a coat; your buttons also are peculiarly placed, and there is a solemnity in your manner of refusing an invitation to pot-luck on a Friday which it is edifying to behold. But all this surely must have a name. You were intended by your father to be a clergyman of the Church of England – that worthy gentleman toasted church and king, till a female reign and premonitory symptoms of apoplexy reduced him to silence and water-gruel; but he is as true a defender of the faith, in his easy gown and slippers, as ever, and looks with still increasing surprise at the appearance of his eldest son, as often as occasional help in your curacy enables you to run home. But don't fancy, for a moment, that I attribute these frequent visits to your regard for the fifth commandment alone: no, dear Charles; for though I grant you are an excellent son and praiseworthy brother, I consider you shine with still greater lustre in the character of a neighbour, especially to the family at Hellebore Park. Gradually I have seen a change almost equal to your own in the seven fair daughters of that house; and it is very evident that, with this change, in some way or other, you are very intimately connected. The five daughters of our neighbour in the Lodge are also very different from what they were; and only Miss Lathpins – who is fifty years old, and believes good works to be such filthy rags that she would be quite ashamed if she were seen putting half-a-crown into the plate, or sending coal and flannel to the poor, and therefore never does it – continues the even tenor of her way, and sighs for a gospel ministry to tell her how few will achieve the kingdom of heaven. Every other house in the parish feels the effects of your visits. We must have a new almanac if you come among us much more; for the very days of the week are no longer to be recognised. Tuesday, instead of being the lineal descendant of Monday, is now known as the heir presumptive of Wednesday, and does duty as the eve of something else. The wife of our physician invited us to dinner on the Feast of St Ollapod, which, after great inquiry, we found meant Monday the 22d. The months will not long escape – the weeks are already doomed – and, in a few years, our parish registers will be as difficult reading as the inscriptions of Nemroud. Have you taken this result of your crusade against the High and Dry into your consideration? Is it right to leave a worthy man like our rector – who conducted his little ecclesiastical boat with great comfort to himself and others, keeping a careful middle channel between the shoals of Dissent and the mudbanks of contented Orthodoxy – to struggle in his old age against rocks which you and your female allies have rolled into the water; with fast-days rearing their sharp points where there used to be such safe navigation, and saint's days and festivals so blocking up the passage that he can't set his skiff near enough the shore, to enable him to visit his parishioners when they are sick or hungry? You would pin the poor old fellow for ever into his pulpit or reading-desk, and he never would have time to go to the extremity of his parish, which, you remember, is five miles from the church; and, at the Doctor's rate of riding, occupies him a good part of the day.

But perhaps you don't know what occurs as soon as your stay is over, and we see the skirts of your departing surtout disappear over Hitherstone Hill. Immediately the whole coterie (which, in this instance, is an undiluted petticoatery) assembles for consultation. Pretty young girls, who would have been engaged ten years ago in the arrangements of a pic-nic, now lay their graceful and busy heads together, to effect an alteration in the height of the pews. My dear Charles, young ladies are by nature carpenters; they know all about hinges, and pannellings, and glue, by a sort of intuition: and it is clear to me that, before you return to us again, the backs of the seats will be lowered at least a foot, and I shall have the pleasure of seeing the whole extent of Tom Holiday's back, and the undulations of the three Miss Holiday's figures during the whole of the lessons. The rector can't hold out long – as indeed who could, against such petitioners? And, after all, it is only so much wood; an his wife, who has retained her shape with very little aid from padding, has no objection to stand up during the psalms, nor any inclination to put her light under a bushel at any time; and some of the younger people, who have not attained the stature of the Venus de Medici, complain that the present elevation of the backs, if it doesn't make dints in their bonnets, at all events cuts them off in the very middle; and my opposition, I am sorry to say, ever since I fell asleep at your sermon on the holiness of celibacy, is attributed to interested motives, and therefore you may fairly expect to find our pews reduced to the height and appearance of a row of rabbit-hutches, when you come back. This point they seem to consider already gained, and now they have advanced their parallels against the Doctor on another side of his defences.

The Doctor, even in his youth, can never have run much risk of being mistaken for Apollo – his nose was probably never of a Grecian pattern, as that ingenious people would certainly have rounded the point with a little more skill, and have placed the nostrils more out of sight. I have heard his front teeth were far from symmetrical, and reminded old Major M'Turk of the charge of Mahratta irregular horse, by which that heroic gentleman lost his eye; but as he has got quit of those spirited, though straggling defenders, and supplied their place with a straight-dressed militia of enamel or bone, which do duty remarkably well, in spite of the bright yellow uniform they have lately assumed, I conclude that he has been a gainer by the exchange. And, on the whole, I have no doubt, if there are some handsomer fellows in the Guards, and at the universities, there are several much uglier people to be seen in this very parish. It can't, therefore, be for the express purpose of escaping the sight of his face that they have begun their operations to force him to turn his back on them during the prayers. But this they are thoroughly resolved on achieving. They have already once placed the Bible surreptitiously on the side of the reading desk, towards the people, leaving the Prayer-Book on the side towards the south; and as the Doctor, in the surprise of the moment, began with his face in that direction, his elocution was wasted on the blank wall of the chancel and the empty pulpit; and we had the pleasure of an uninterrupted view of his profile, and a side-hearing also of his words, which gave us as complete a silhouette of the prayers as of the rector. When we come to the enjoyment of his full-face reversed, and can leisurely contemplate his occiput, and the nape of his neck – in which, I am sorry to see, number one so powerfully developed – we shall have the farther advantage of not having our own meditations interrupted by hearing a syllable he says. He resists, indeed, at present; and even told a deputation of ladies that he would consult common sense on the occasion, and read so that the poor folks under the west gallery could join in every petition. Miss Araminta – your Araminta, Charles – lifted her beautiful eyes to the Doctor in surprise, and asked "if he really prayed to John Simpkins and Peter Bolt, for surely he could pray for them, and with them better, with his face to the altar;" and the Doctor said something about "girls minding their own business, and leaving him to his," which would have led to very unpleasant consequences, if the rest of the ambassadors had not interfered, and smoothed the raven down of the Doctor's temper by some judicious declarations of respect for his office, and contempt for some unfortunate evangelical brethren in the neighbourhood; till at last the old man took Araminta by the hand, and told her, with great truth, that she was one of the nicest girls in the world, and that he would ride fifty miles at a moment's warning, to save her an instant's discomfort. So they retired for that time, hinting that they were rather surprised that their rector should have used the same argument which had been employed by the Rev. Ebenezer Snuffle, the low church vicar of the adjoining village. A telling blow this, Charles, as you are well aware; for I verily believe the Doctor would soften towards the Koran, if his neighbour made an attack on Mahommed; so I wait the issue without much uncertainty as to what it will be. For all this, I can't help holding you, in a great measure, responsible; for there is no shutting one's eyes to the fact, that a decided step in advance is taken after every one of your runs into our parish. Your father, and Major M'Turk, and I, sink lower and lower in the estimation of your followers every day. Instead of the nice little parties we used to have, where the girls, most of whom we remember as infants, used to sing "Lizzie Lindsay" for the amusement of the old ones, or play magic music, or games at forfeits, to please themselves, they now huddle up in a corner – if, perchance, no eve or fast prevents them from coming out to tea – and hold deep consultations on the state and prospects of the Church. And yet there is something so innocent and pretty in the way they manage their plots, and such a charming feeling of triumph fills their hearts, when they have achieved a victory over the habits and customs of the village, that I hardly wonder they never pause in their career, or give ear to the warnings of stupid old people like the trio I have named. In the mean time, they certainly have it all their own way, – in the injunctions they have laid on the poor people, to turn round at some parts of the service, stand up at others, and join in the most wonderful responses, in a set key, which they call entoning; and they have tormented the band so much with practising anthems, that half the population have turned dissenters in self-defence; and while the front seats are filled with satin bonnets and India shawls, and the rustle of silks is like the flight of a thousand doves when the altitude needs to be changed, there isn't a poor person to be seen in the church except John Simpkins and Peter Bolt, and they, I am sorry to say, are far from being the same quiet humble paupers they used to be; for our feminine apostles have been telling them of the honour and dignity of the poor, till there is no bearing their pride and self-conceit. Sometimes, out of respect to the Doctor, and a reverence for the old church, the grocer, the carpenter, and a few of the shopkeepers, still make their appearance in the afternoon, but they are like children the first time they go to Astley's, and stare with wonder at all the changes they see; and even our rector himself has become so confused, that he doesn't feel altogether sure that he hasn't turned a dissenter, for the mode, if not of conducting, at least of joining in the service, is something quite different from what he has been used to.

Now dissent, as you know, has been the bugbear of the Doctor through life. The very name carries with it something inexpressibly dreadful, and among the most terrifying to him of all the forms of dissent was that of Rome. But lately, a vast number of bright eyes have been lifted to the ceiling, and a great many beautiful lips opened, and a great many sweet voices raised in opposition to any hostile allusion to the objects of his abhorrence. "The church of Fenelon," says one in a reverential tone, "can surely not be altogether apostate." "The church of the two Gregories, the church of A'Beckett and Dunstan, of St Senanus, St Januarius, and the Seven Champions of Christendom, can never have fallen away from the faith," exclaims Miss Tinderella Swainlove in a very contemptuous tone, when the Doctor contrasts the great and ambitious names of Rome with the humility required in a Christian pastor. "In short, Dr Smiler, we wish to know," she said not a week ago, when she had gone up to the parsonage to practise a Gregorian chant on Christina Smiler's concertina – "we wish to know, Doctor Smiler, whether religion consists in bare plaster walls and a cassock?" "Certainly not, my dear Tinderella, but you will observe" —