' You must not touch her. God has laid his hand upon her: she is mad.'
' Mad !' responded the superstitious crowd: ' God is with her!'
' It is he, it is the traitor, her lover, who has told her to counterfeit madness ! No, no! we must make a finish with all the enemies of God and of men,' cried the most ferocious of the savages ; ' besides, our oath binds us: let us do our duty!
' Approach her, then, if you dare ! ' once more cried Fedor, in the delirium of despair ; ' she has suffered me to press her in my arms without resistance; you see she must be mad. But she speaks! Listen ! '
They approached, and heard these words : ?i It was I, then, whom he loved!'
Fedor, who alone understood the meaning of this sentence, fell on his knees, and thanking God, burst into tears.
The executioners drew back from Xenie with involuntary respect. ' She is mad !' they repeated to
each other, in an under tone.
*****
Since that day she has never passed an hour without repeating the same words —' It was I, then, whom he loved!'
Many, in seeing her so calm, would question her g 6
132THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.
insanity. It is supposed that the love of Fedor, thus accidentally revealed, awoke in the heart of his foster- sister, the innocent, though passionate tenderness, which the unhappy girl had, unknown either to herself or her lover, so long felt for him; and that the suddenness of the untimely discovery broke her heart,
No exhortation or advice has hitherto been able to prevent her repeating these words, which proceed from her lips mechanically, and with an incessant volubility which is frightful.
Her mind, her whole existence, has stopped, and gathered itself around the involuntary avowal of the love of Fedor, and the organs of intelligence continue their functions, as it were, by the operation of a spring, obeying that remainder of the will which bids them for ever repeat the mysterious and sacred words which suffice for her mental life.
If Fedor did not perish after Thelenef, it was not to the weariness of the executioners that he owed his safety, but to that of the spectators; for the passive party tires of crime more quickly than he who is actively engaged in its perpetration. The crowd, satiated with blood, desired that the execution of the young man should be deferred until the following night. In the interval, considerable forces arrived from several sides. On the morrow, the canton in which the revolt had sprung up was surrounded, the villages were decimated, the most culpable — condemned, not to death, but to a hundred and twenty strokes of the knout — miserably perished. The remainder were banished to Siberia. Nevertheless, the populations in the neighbourhood of Vologda are not yet restored to quiet and order ; each day witnesses the departure
THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.133
of hundreds of peasants, exiled in a mass to Siberia. The lords of these deserted villages are ruined ; for in estates of this kind, it is the men who constitute the wealth of the proprietor. The rich domains of the
Prince have become a dreary solitude. Fedor,
with his mother and his wife, have been compelled to follow the inhabitants of their desolate village.
Xenie was present at the departure of the exiles, but she did not say adieu, for this new misfortune had not restored to her the light of reason.
At the moment of departing, an unexpected event cruelly aggravated the grief of Fedor and his family. His wife and mother were already in the cart, and he was about to follow them, to quit Vologda for ever ; but he saw only Xenie, he suffered only for his sister, an orphan, deprived of reason, or at least of memory, and whom he was going to abandon among the still warm ashes of their native hamlet. Now that she had need of the kindest aid, strangers were going to be her only protectors. The bitter feeling of despair which this thought produced, stopped his tears. A piercing cry, proceeding from the cart, recalled him to the side of his wife, whom he foimd fainting ; — one of the soldiers was taking away his child.
' What are уогг going to do?' cried the distracted father.
' To place it there by the way-side that they may bury it; do you not see that it is dead ?' replied the Cossack.
' I will carry it myself!'
' You shall not touch it.'
At this moment, other soldiers attracted by the noise, seized Fedor, who, yielding to irresistible force,
134THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.
could only weep and supplicate. ' He is not dead, he has fainted; let me embrace him. I promise you,' he said, convulsively sobbing, 'to give him up to you if his heart no longer beats. You, perhaps, have a son; have pity on me, then,' said the unfortunate man, overcome with grief. The Cossack was moved ; he restored to him his child. Scarcely had the father touched the icy body, than his hair stood upon his forehead,—he cast his eyes around him, they encountered the inspired look of Xenie. Neither misfortune, nor injustice, nor death, nor insanity,—nothing upon earth could destroy the sympathy of these two hearts, born to understand each other.
The young man made a sign to Xenie; the soldiers respected the poor maniac, who advanced, and received the body of the babe from the hands of its father, but without a word being uttered. The daughter of Thelenef, still without speaking, next took off her veil and gave it to Fedor; she then pressed the little corpse in her arms, and, charged with her sacred burden, remained in the same place, immovable, until she had seen her beloved brother, supported between a weeping mother and a dying wife, leave for ever the village which had given him birth. She long followed with her eye the convoy of the exiled peasants: at length, when the last cart had disappeared on the road to Siberia, and she was left alone, she took away the infant, and began to play with the cold remains, bestowing upon them the most tender and endearing caresses.
' He is not dead, then!' said the lookers on, '*he will revive; she will restore him !'
Power of love! who can assign thy limits ? * * * *
THE HISTOKY OP THELENEF.135
The mother of Fedor reproached herself without ceasing, for not having detained Xenie in the cottage of the old man ; ' at least she would not then have been forced to witness the punishment of her father,' said the good Elizabeth.
' You would have preserved her reason, only to have increased her sufferings,' replied Fedor; and again there was a dead silence.
The poor old woman had for a time been very resigned. Neither the massacres nor the fire had extorted from her a single complaint; but when it was necessary to submit with the other Vologdians to the pain of exile — to quit the cabin where her son was born, where the father of her son had died, when she was obliged to abandon her brother in helpless dotage, courage forsook her, her fortitude suddenly failed, she clung to the planks of her cottage, and at length had to be torn away, and placed by force in the telega, where Ave have seen her weeping for the new-born infant of her beloved son.
It will perhaps scarcely be believed that the tender cares, the vivifying breath, or perhaps the prayers of Xenie, restored at length the life of the child whom Fedor had believed to be dead. This miracle of tenderness, or of piety, causes her to be venerated as a saint by the strangers sent from the North to re-people the deserted ruins of Vologda.
