Here he broke off his reading and said to me severely:
“What will you say now to justify yourself?”
I was going to go on as I had begun and explain my connection with Marya Ivanovna as frankly as all the rest. But I suddenly felt an insurmountable repugnance. It occurred to me that if I named her, the commission would call on her to testify; and the thought of mixing her name with the vile denunciations of villains and of her being brought in person to confront them—this terrible thought shocked me so much that I faltered and became confused.
My judges, who, it seemed, were beginning to listen to my responses with some benevolence, again became prejudiced against me, seeing my embarrassment. The officer of the guards requested that I be confronted with the main informer. The general ordered “yesterday’s villain” to be called. I turned briskly to the door, waiting for my accuser to appear. A few minutes later chains clanked, the door opened, and in came—Shvabrin. I was amazed at the change in him. He was terribly thin and pale. His hair, jet-black still recently, had turned completely gray; his long beard was disheveled. He repeated his accusations in a weak but resolute voice. According to him, I had been sent to Orenburg by Pugachev as a spy; I had ridden out on skirmishes every day in order to transmit news in writing about all that was going on in the town; then I had openly gone over to the impostor, had driven with him from fortress to fortress, trying in all ways to ruin my comrade-traitors, so as to take their places and profit from the rewards bestowed by the impostor. I heard him out silently and was pleased with one thing: the vile villain did not utter Marya Ivanovna’s name, either because his vanity suffered at the thought of the one who had scornfully rejected him, or because hidden in his heart was a spark of the same feeling that had also made me keep silent—however it was, the name of the Belogorsk commandant’s daughter was not uttered in the presence of the commission. I became still more firm in my resolve, and when the judges asked how I could refute Shvabrin’s testimony, I replied that I stuck to my first explanation and could say nothing more to justify myself. The general ordered us taken away. We went out together. I glanced calmly at Shvabrin, but did not say a word to him. He grinned maliciously at me and, picking up his chains, went ahead of me and quickened his pace. I was taken back to prison and was not summoned for any further questioning.
I was not a witness to everything of which it now remains for me to inform the reader; but I have so often heard stories about it that the smallest details are engraved in my memory, and it seems to me as if I had been invisibly present.
Marya Ivanovna was received by my parents with that sincere cordiality which distinguished people of the old days. They saw it as a blessing from God that they had the chance to shelter and show kindness to the poor orphan. Soon they became sincerely attached to her, because it was impossible to know her and not love her. My love no longer seemed an empty whim to my father; and my mother wished only that her Petrusha should marry the captain’s dear daughter.
The rumor of my arrest shocked my whole family. Marya Ivanovna had told my parents so simply about my strange acquaintance with Pugachev that it not only had not troubled them, but had often even made them laugh wholeheartedly. My father did not want to believe that I could have been involved in a vile rebellion, the aim of which was the overthrow of the throne and the extermination of the nobility. He closely questioned Savelyich. My tutor did not conceal that his master had visited Emelka Pugachev and that the villain had, in fact, received him well; but he swore that he had not heard of any treason. The old folks calmed down and started waiting impatiently for favorable news. Marya Ivanovna was deeply troubled, but said nothing, for she was endowed in the highest degree with modesty and prudence.
Several weeks went by…Suddenly my father received a letter from Petersburg, from our relation, Prince B. The prince wrote to him about me. After the usual preliminaries, he informed him that the suspicions concerning my participation in the rebels’ schemes had turned out, unfortunately, to be all too substantial, that exemplary punishment should have been meted out to me, but that the empress, out of respect for my father’s merits and his advanced age, decided to show mercy to his criminal son and, sparing him an ignominious execution, ordered him only to be sent to a remote corner of Siberia in perpetual exile.
This unexpected blow nearly killed my father. He lost his habitual firmness, and his grief (usually mute) poured out in bitter lamentations.
