Alexei Tolstoy: Cagliostro

Alexei guessed that this was a portrait of the late Princess Praskovia Pavlovna Tulupova, his third cousin whom he had seen only when he was a child. He had the portrait moved to the new house at once and hung in the library.

He saw the portrait there before him all the time. Whether he was reading a book-he loved reading the description of travels in savage lands-or making notes in his note-book, while smoking a pipe, or whether in his slippers sown with glass beads he was simply wandering about the rooms with the freshly waxed hardwood floors, he would pause for a long look at the lovely portrait. Little by little he bestowed upon this image all the most excellent qualities of kindness, wisdom and passion. To himself he started calling Praskovia Pavlovna the friend who shared his lonely hours and inspired his dreams.

Once, he had a dream about her in which she was as motionless and haughty as in the portrait, but the rose in her hand was fresh, he reached for it but could not take it out of her hand. He awoke with an alarmingly beating heart and a burning head. After that night he could not look at the portrait without a thrill of excitement. The woman in it had wholly captured his imagination.

Fedosia Ivanovna came back with the letter in her hand, her spectacles on her nose, and, seating herself in an armchair facing Alexei, said:

"Pavel Petrovich writes…"

"What Pavel Petrovich, auntie?"

"Why, bless you, Alexis, my dear, Pavel Petrovich Fedyashev, the second-major… Well then, he writes about this and that, and here's something for you: A great to-do has been caused here with us in St. Petersburg by the well-known Count Fenix, or as he is called-Cagliostro. He cured Princess's Volkonskaya's sick pearls, increased the ruby in General Bibikov's ring by eleven carats, and what's more, destroyed the air bubble inside the stone. He showed Kostich the famous deal in a bowl of punch, and the very next day Kostich won more than a hundred thousand roubles. For Golovina, the lady-in-waiting, he materialized the ghost of her dead husband out of her locket, and the husband actually spoke to her and held her hand, after which the poor old lady became quite daft… In short, the miracles are too many to enumerate… The Empress was of a mind to summon him to the palace, but here a most funny thing happened. Prince Potyomkin fell violently in love with the wife of this Count Fenix, a Chech lady, I have not seen her myself, but people say she is a beauty. Potyomkin had a lot of money, costly carpets and objets d'art passed on to the Count, but when he saw there was no buying him off with money, he decided to steal the beauty at his own ball. But that very day the Count, together with his wife, vanished from St. Petersburg no one knows where, and the police have been looking for them in vain till this day…'"

Alexei listened to the letter very attentively, and then read it over himself. A light flush appeared on his cheeks.

"All these miracles are a manifestation of an incomprehensible magnetic force," he said. "If only I could meet that man… Oh, if I could just meet him…" He started pacing the floor, uttering these ejaculations: "Oh, if only… I would find the right words to persuade him… Let him experiment on me… Let him embody my dream… Let my dream become reality, and let my life dissolve like smoke. I won't regret it…"

Fedosia Ivanovna looked at her nephew with fright, her faded eyes all but starting out of her head. It was enough to give anyone a fright. Alexei had flung himself into an armchair and with a dreamy smile stared through the window at the two village girls who had come close to the window with a basket of mushrooms, but he saw neither the mushrooms, nor the girls, not the field where a tall pillar of dust started whirling along a balk, and drifted away, swirling and scaring the birds in the roadside birch.

The next morning Alexei woke up with a splitting headache. The sky was sultry in spite of the early hour. The leaves hung motionlessly on the trees, everything seemed mesmerized, and the green had a metallic sheen like the leaves on a tin gravestone wreath. The hens did not cluck; a red cow that looked bloated lay without moving or chewing on the slope going down to the river. Even the sparrows were subdued. In the north-east, close to the ground the colour of the sky was dark, dull and harsh.

The steward came into the dining-room with his report. Alexei left him with Fedosia Ivanovna and, grimacing from the pain in his temples, went to the library, opened a book but very soon grew bored with it, so he took up a pen, but all he could do was practise his signature.

Then he began to contemplate the portrait of Praskovia Pavlovna, but even the portrait, like everything else around him, seemed cruel and sinister. Three flies were sitting on the face. Alexei felt that he would burst into sobs if everything that surrounded him remained so glaringly clear-cut and harsh much longer. His soul was sick with misery.

Suddenly, a window banged open somewhere in the house, there was the sound of shattered glass and frightened voices. Alexei went and stood at the library window. A huge, dense cloud, as dark as the sky at night, was advancing on the estate, creeping low over the fields. The water in the river turned dark blue and had a sullen look. The reeds thrashed about and then lay down in crumpled heaps. A strong wind picked up the goose feathers on the bank, tore the crow's nest down from the old willow, tousled the branches, chased the hens down the yard, rocked the wooden fence, picked up the skirt of a peasant woman and threw it over her head, and then pounced on the house with all its might, tore into the windows and set up a wail in the chimneys. A flash of light appeared in the dark cloud and with blinding zigzags like a tree root ran all the way down to the ground. The sky split apart, and thunder crashed. The house shook. The spring in the mantelpiece clock rang sadly in response.

Alexei was standing at the window with the wind tearing at his long hair and fluttering the skirts of his dressing-gown. His aunt came running in, she gripped him by the hand, pulled him away from the window and shouted something, but the second, even more terrible crash of thunder, drowned out her words. The next minute came the first heavy drops of rain, and then it came pouring down in a grey curtain, drumming and frothing on the panes of the closed window. It grew quite dark outside.

"Alexis," said his aunt, still breathing heavily from the scare she had suffered. "I'm telling you: we have guests."

"Guests? Who are they?"

"I don't rightly know myself. Their carriage broke down, they're frightened of the storm and are asking us to put them up for the night."

"They're welcome, of course."

"I've already given the orders. They're taking off their wet things just now. And you might go and dress too."

Alexei hurried out of the library, but in the door he all but collided with Fimka, the parlour maid, who cannoned in with her hair hanging loose, her sarafan rain-soaked, and cried in a panic:

"Mistress, mistress dear, these guests, I swear it's the honest truth-one of them is as black as the devil!"

The rain went on pouring for the rest of the day, and candles had to be lit earlier than usual. Quiet came after the storm. The windows and doors into the garden were flung open, and there a gentle, warm rain was falling in the darkness, pattering softly on the leaves.

Alexei stood in the door wearing a silk kaftan, a waistcoat with a design of forget-me-nots woven on the cream ground, he carried a sword and his hair had been curled and powdered. The wet grass on the lawn looked grey where the light fell on it. The air smelt of damp and flowers.

Alexei stood looking at the lighted windows of the right wing of the house which was built in a semicircle and ended behind the lime trees. There, shadows appeared on the lowered white window curtains: now the shadow of a man in a huge wig, now the graceful shadow of a woman, and now that of the servant-a tall person wearing a turban.