



Produced by David Widger.





                               *VANINKA*

                                  _By_

                        *Alexandre Dumas, Pere*

         _From the set of Eight Volumes of "Celebrated Crimes"_


                                  1910




CONTENTS


    *VANINKA*




*VANINKA*


About the end of the reign of the Emperor Paul I--that is to say,
towards the middle of the first year of the nineteenth century--just as
four o'clock in the afternoon was sounding from the church of St. Peter
and St. Paul, whose gilded vane overlooks the ramparts of the fortress,
a crowd, composed of all sorts and conditions of people, began to gather
in front of a house which belonged to General Count Tchermayloff,
formerly military governor of a fair-sized town in the government of
Pultava. The first spectators had been attracted by the preparations
which they saw had been made in the middle of the courtyard for
administering torture with the knout. One of the general's serfs, he who
acted as barber, was to be the victim.

Although this kind of punishment was a common enough sight in St.
Petersburg, it nevertheless attracted all passers-by when it was
publicly administered. This was the occurrence which had caused a crowd,
as just mentioned, before General Tchermayloff's house.

The spectators, even had they been in a hurry, would have had no cause
to complain of being kept waiting, for at half-past four a young man of
about five-and-twenty, in the handsome uniform of an aide-de-camp, his
breast covered with decorations, appeared on the steps at the farther
end of the court-yard in front of the house. These steps faced the large
gateway, and led to the general's apartments.

Arrived on the steps, the young aide-de-camp stopped a moment and fixed
his eyes on a window, the closely drawn curtains of which did not allow
him the least chance of satisfying his curiosity, whatever may have been
its cause. Seeing that it was useless and that he was only wasting time
in gazing in that direction, he made a sign to a bearded man who was
standing near a door which led to the servants' quarters. The door was
immediately opened, and the culprit was seen advancing in the middle of
a body of serfs and followed by the executioner. The serfs were forced
to attend the spectacle, that it might serve as an example to them. The
culprit was the general's barber, as we have said, and the executioner
was merely the coachman, who, being used to the handling of a whip, was
raised or degraded, which you will, to the office of executioner every
time punishment with the knout was ordered. This duty did not deprive
him of either the esteem or even the friendship of his comrades, for
they well knew that it was his arm alone that punished them and that his
heart was not in his work. As Ivan's arm as well as the rest of his body
was the property of the general, and the latter could do as he pleased
with it, no one was astonished that it should be used for this purpose.
More than that, correction administered by Ivan was nearly always
gentler than that meted out by another; for it often happened that Ivan,
who was a good-natured fellow, juggled away one or two strokes of the
knout in a dozen, or if he were forced by those assisting at the
punishment to keep a strict calculation, he manoeuvred so that the tip
of the lash struck the deal plank on which the culprit was lying, thus
taking much of the sting out of the stroke. Accordingly, when it was
Ivan's turn to be stretched upon the fatal plank and to receive the
correction he was in the habit of administering, on his own account,
those who momentarily played his part as executioner adopted the same
expedients, remembering only the strokes spared and not the strokes
received. This exchange of mutual benefits, therefore, was productive of
an excellent understanding between Ivan and his comrades, which was
never so firmly knit as at the moment when a fresh execution was about
to take place. It is true that the first hour after the punishment was
generally so full of suffering that the knouted was sometimes unjust to
the knouter, but this feeling seldom out-lasted the evening, and it was
rare when it held out after the first glass of spirits that the operator
drank to the health of his patient.

The serf upon whom Ivan was about to exercise his dexterity was a man of
five or six-and-thirty, red of hair and beard, a little above average
height. His Greek origin might be traced in his countenance, which even
in its expression of terror had preserved its habitual characteristics
of craft and cunning.

When he arrived at the spot where the punishment was to take place, the
culprit stopped and looked up at the window which had already claimed
the young aide-de-camp's attention; it still