The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Martyn-Solsky went at once and reported it to Count Chernyshev,¹⁶ so that the sovereign could be informed, but Count Chernyshev yelled at him:

“Take care of your vomitives and purgatives,” he says, “and don’t mix in what’s not your business: in Russia we’ve got generals for that.”

So the sovereign was not told, and such cleaning went on right up to the Crimean campaign. At that time, they started loading their guns, and the bullets were loose in them, because the barrels had been cleaned with bath brick.

Then Martyn-Solsky reminded Chernyshev about Lefty, but Count Chernyshev only said:

“Go to the devil, anima-tube, don’t mix in what’s not your business, otherwise I’ll deny I ever heard it from you—and then you’ll really get it.”

Martyn-Solsky thought: “It’s true he’ll deny it,” so he kept quiet.

But if they had made Lefty’s words known to the sovereign in time, the Crimean War would have turned out quite differently for the enemy.

XX

Now all this is already “the deeds of bygone days” and “legends of old,”¹⁷ though not very old, but we need not hasten to forget this legend, despite its fabulous makeup and the epic character of its main hero. Lefty’s proper name, like the names of many great geniuses, is forever lost to posterity; but, as a myth embodied by popular fantasy, he is interesting, and his adventures may serve as a reminder of that epoch, the general spirit of which has been aptly and rightly grasped.

To be sure, there are no such masters as the fabulous Lefty in Tula nowadays: machines have evened out the inequality of talents and gifts, and genius does not strive against assiduousness and precision. While favoring the increase of earnings, machines do not favor artistic boldness, which sometimes went beyond all measure, inspiring popular fantasy to compose fabulous legends similar to this one.

Workers, of course, know how to value the advantages provided by the practical application of mechanical science, but they remember the old times with pride and love. It is their epos, and, what’s more, with “a man’s soul inside.”

* The “priest Fedot” has not blown in on the wind: before his death in Taganrog, the emperor Alexander Pavlovich confessed to the priest Alexei Fedotov-Chekhovsky, who afterwards was referred to as “His Majesty’s Confessor” and liked to remind everyone of this completely accidental circumstance. This Fedotov-Chekhovsky is obviously the legendary “priest Fedot.” Author.

The Spirit of Madame de Genlis

A Spiritualistic Occurrence

It is sometimes much easier to call up a spirit than to get rid of it.

A. B. CALMET¹

I

The strange adventure I intend to tell took place several years ago, and can now be freely told, the more so as I reserve for myself the right not to use a single proper name in doing so.

In the winter of the year 186–, there came to settle in Petersburg a very prosperous and distinguished family, consisting of three persons: the mother—a middle-aged lady, a princess, reputed to be a woman of refined education and with the best social connections in Russia and abroad; her son, a young man, who that year had set out on his career in the diplomatic corps; and her daughter, the young princess, who was just going on seventeen.

Up to then the newly arrived family had usually lived abroad, where the old princess’s late husband had occupied the post of Russian representative at one of the minor European courts. The young prince and princess were born and grew up in foreign parts, receiving there a completely foreign but very thorough education.

II