After this, Prince Chernuishef, with a good-natured carelessness characteristic of him, was perfectly at ease, the more because he knew well that he had never “usurped “any land of the peasants, as it had been said in the peasants’ petition. If any land had ever been “usurped “it had been done by his father, but since then more than forty years had passed away. He knew that the peasants of the village of Izlegoshchi
1 Ekonomichesky krestyanin was formerly a peasant who belonged to a monastery and was subject to an ekonom or steward.
even without this land were prosperous, that they did not need it, and that they were good neighbors of his, and he could not understand why they were “mad “with him.
He knew that he had never injured any one, and that he had no wish to injure any one; he had always lived with charity to all and that was all he wanted to do, and so he did not believe that they wanted to do him any wrong : he detested litigation, and therefore he had not labored in the senate, notwithstanding the advice and admonition of his attorney, Ilya Mitrofanof. Hav-ing disregarded the term of the appeal, he lost the case in the senate, and lost it in such a manner that ruin stared him in the face. According to the decree of the senate not only were five thousand desyatins of land to be taken from him, but on account of his illegal use of the land he was obliged to pay the peasants 107,000 rubles.
Prince Chernuishef had had eight thousand serfs, but all his estates were mortgaged; he had many debts, and this decision of the senate ruined him together with all his great family. He had a son and five daughters. He woke up when it was too late to do anything in the senate. According to Ilya Mitrofanof he had one way of salvation; that was to petition the Emperor and ap-peal the case to the imperial council. For this it was necessary personally to address one of the ministers or one of the members of the council, or even and this would be still better the Emperor himself. Having decided on this plan of action, Prince Grigori Ivanovitch, in the autumn of 1817, left his beloved Studentso, where he always lived, and went with his whole family to Moscow. He went to Moscow and not to Petersburg, because during the autumn of that year the sovereign, with his. court, and all his highest dignitaries, and a part of the Guard in which Grigori Ivanovitch’s son served, was to be in Moscow for the ceremony of dedi-cating the cathedral of the Saviour in memory of the deliverance of Russia from the invasion of the French.
Even in August immediately after the receipt of the horrible news of the decision of the senate, Prince Gri-gori Ivanovitch found himself in Moscow. His steward had been sent on in advance to make ready his private house on the Arbata; a baggage-train was sent on with furniture, servants, horses, equipages, and provisions. In September the prince, with his whole family in seven carriages drawn by his own horses, reached Moscow, and settled down in their mansion. His relatives and friends, who had come to Moscow from the country or from Petersburg, began to gather in Moscow in Septem-ber; the Moscow life with all its gayeties, the arrival of his son, the coming out of his daughters, and the success of his eldest daughter, Aleksandra, the one blonde among all the dark Chernuishefs, so occupied and engrossed the prince, that notwithstanding the fact that he was spending there in Moscow all the remainder of his sub-stance, in case he had to pay his fine, he kept forget-ting his chief business, and was annoyed and bored when Ilya Mitrofanof mentioned it, and he kept putting off doing anything to further the success of his affairs.
Ivan Mironovitch Baushkin, the chief advocate of the muzhiks, who had carried the lawsuit through the senate with such zeal, who knew all the ways and means of dealing with the secretaries and head clerks, and who had so cleverly spent at Petersburg in the form of bribes the ten thousand rubles collected from the muzhiks, had also now put an end to his activity and had returned to the village; where, with the reward for his success and with the money not expended in bribes, he had bought a piece of woodland of a neighboring proprietor, and had established in it an office. 1 The lawsuit in the highest instance was at an end, and by good rights the affair should now take care of itself.
Of all those that had been entangled in this affair, the only ones who could not forget it were the six muzhiks, who had been for seven months in prison, and their families deprived of their head men. But there was nothing to be done about it. There they were in the Krasnoslobodsky prison, and their families were struggling to get along without them, There was no one to petition. Even Ivan Mironovitch declared that there was nothing he could do in their behalf; that this was not an affair of the “mir” or of the civil court, but a criminal case. The muzhiks were in prison and no one was working in their behalf; only the family of Mikhai’l Gerasimovitch, especially his old woman/ Tikhonovna, could not acquiesce in the fact that her “golden one,” her old man, Gerasimuitch, was confined in prison with a shaven head.
Tikhonovna could not remain in peace. She besought Mironuitch to work for her; Mironuitch refused. Then she resolved herself to go, and pray God to release her old man. The year before she had vowed to go on a pilgrimage to the saints, and yet for lack of leisure, and because she did not like to leave the house in the care of her sisters-in-law, who were young, she had postponed it for a year. Now that she had become poor, and Gerasimuitch was in prison, she re-membered her vow. She let her household cares have the go-by, and with a deacon’s wife of her village, she started in on her pilgrimage. At first they went to the district where the old man was in prison; they car-ried him some shirts, and thence they went to Moscow, passing through the governmental city.
On the way Tikhonovna related the story of her mis-fortune, and the deacon’s wife advised her to petition the Tsar, who, she had heard, was to be at Penza, tell-ing her what were the chances of pardon. When the pilgrims reached Penza they learned that the Tsar’s brother, the Grand Duke Nikola’f Pavlovitch, and not the Tsar himself, had already come to Penza. Coming forth from the cathedral at Penza, Tikhonovna forced her way through the line, threw herself on her knees, and began to beg for her lord and master. The Grand Duke was amazed, the governor was angry, and the old woman was arrested. After a day’s detention she was set free, and went on to Troitsa. At this monastery Tikhonovna prepared for the sacrament, and made con-fession to Father Pa’fsi.
At confession she told all her misfortune, and confessed how she had tried to offer her petition to the Tsar’s brother. Father Pa’fsi told her there was no sin in that, and that she was on the right track, and that it was no sin to petition the Tsar, and then he let her go. Also at Khotkovo she stopped with “an inspired woman,” 1 and this woman advised her to present her petition to the Tsar himself. Tikhonovna, on her way back with the deacon’s wife, went to Moscow to visit the saints there. There she learned that the Tsar was in Moscow, and it seemed to her that God had commanded her to petition the Tsar. All she had to do was to get the petition written. At Moscow the pilgrims stopped at an inn. They asked for a night’s lodgings; it was granted them. After supper the deacon’s wife lay down on the oven, but Tikhonovna lay down on a bench, placing her kotomka, or birch-bark wallet, under her head, and went to sleep. In the morning, before it was light, Tikhonovna got up, awakened the deacon’s wife, and came down into the court before the dvornik had called them.
“You are up early, baushka,” 2 said he.
“You see we are going to matins, benefactor,” re-plied Tikhonovna.
“God go with you, baushka. Christ save you,” said the dvornik; and the pilgrim women started for the Kreml.
After attending matins and mass, and having kissed the holy things, the two old women, with difficulty find-ing their way, went to the Chernuishefs’. The deacon’s wife said that the old lady Chernuishef had strongly urged her to stop there, that she always received all pilgrims.
“There we shall find a man to help with the peti-tion,” said the deacon’s wife, and the two pilgrims went wandering along the streets, asking the way as they went. The deacon’s wife had been there once, but had forgot-ten where it was. Twice they were almost crushed, men shouted at them, and scolded them. Once a police officer grasped the deacon’s wife by the shoulder, and gave
