HOWEVER disastrous these measures might be to private interests, they were, under the circumstances, perfectly justifiable.
"All Russian subjects are forbidden to leave the province;"if Ivan Ogareff was still in the province, this would at any rate prevent him, unless with the greatest difficulty, from rejoining Feofar-Khan, and becoming a very formidable lieutenant to the Tartar chief.
"All foreigners of Asiatic origin are ordered to leave the province in four-and-twenty hours;" this would send off in a body all the traders from Central Asia, as well as the bands of Bohemians, gipsies, etc., having more or less sympathy with the Tartars. So many heads, so many spies--undoubtedly affairs required their expulsion.
It is easy to understand the effect produced by these two thunder-claps bursting over a town like Nijni-Novgorod, so densely crowded with visitors, and with a commerce so greatly surpassing that of all other places in Russia. The natives whom business called beyond the Siberian frontier could not leave the province for a time at least.
The tenor of the first article of the order was express; it admitted of no exception. All private interests must yield to the public weal.
As to the second article of the proclamation, the order of expulsion which it contained admitted of no evasion either.
It only concerned foreigners of Asiatic origin, but these could do nothing but pack up their merchandise and go back the way they came.
As to the mountebanks, of which there were a considerable number, they had nearly a thousand versts to go before they could reach the nearest frontier. For them it was simply misery.
At first there rose against this unusual measure a murmur of protestation, a cry of despair, but this was quickly suppressed by the presence of the Cossacks and agents of police.
Immediately, what might be called the exodus from the immense plain began. The awnings in front of the stalls were folded up;the theaters were taken to pieces; the fires were put out;the acrobats' ropes were lowered; the old broken-winded horses of the traveling vans came back from their sheds.
Agents and soldiers with whip or stick stimulated the tardy ones, and made nothing of pulling down the tents even before the poor Bohemians had left them.
Under these energetic measures the square of Nijni-Novgorod would, it was evident, be entirely evacuated before the evening, and to the tumult of the great fair would succeed the silence of the desert.
It must again be repeated--for it was a necessary aggravation of these severe measures--that to all those nomads chiefly concerned in the order of expulsion even the steppes of Siberia were forbidden, and they would be obliged to hasten to the south of the Caspian Sea, either to Persia, Turkey, or the plains of Turkestan. The post of the Ural, and the mountains which form, as it were, a prolongation of the river along the Russian frontier, they were not allowed to pass.
They were therefore under the necessity of traveling six hundred miles before they could tread a free soil.
Just as the reading of the proclamation by the head of the police came to an end, an idea darted instinctively into the mind of Michael Strogoff. "What a singular coincidence," thought he, "between this proclamation expelling all foreigners of Asiatic origin, and the words exchanged last evening between those two gipsies of the Zingari race. 'The Father himself sends us where we wish to go,' that old man said. But 'the Father' is the emperor!
He is never called anything else among the people. How could those gipsies have foreseen the measure taken against them? how could they have known it beforehand, and where do they wish to go?
Those are suspicious people, and it seems to me that to them the government proclamation must be more useful than injurious."But these reflections were completely dispelled by another which drove every other thought out of Michael's mind.
He forgot the Zingaris, their suspicious words, the strange coincidence which resulted from the proclamation.
The remembrance of the young Livonian girl suddenly rushed into his mind. "Poor child!" he thought to himself.
"She cannot now cross the frontier."
In truth the young girl was from Riga; she was Livonian, consequently Russian, and now could not leave Russian territory!
The permit which had been given her before the new measures had been promulgated was no longer available.
All the routes to Siberia had just been pitilessly closed to her, and, whatever the motive taking her to Irkutsk, she was now forbidden to go there.
This thought greatly occupied Michael Strogoff. He said to himself, vaguely at first, that, without neglecting anything of what was due to his important mission, it would perhaps be possible for him to be of some use to this brave girl; and this idea pleased him. Knowing how serious were the dangers which he, an energetic and vigorous man, would have personally to encounter, he could not conceal from himself how infinitely greater they would prove to a young unprotected girl.
As she was going to Irkutsk, she would be obliged to follow the same road as himself, she would have to pass through the bands of invaders, as he was about to attempt doing himself. If, moreover, she had at her disposal only the money necessary for a journey taken under ordinary circumstances, how could she manage to accomplish it under conditions which made it not only perilous but expensive?
"Well," said he, "if she takes the route to Perm, it is nearly impossible but that I shall fall in with her.
Then, I will watch over her without her suspecting it;and as she appears to me as anxious as myself to reach Irkutsk, she will cause me no delay."But one thought leads to another. Michael Strogoff had till now thought only of doing a kind action; but now another idea flashed into his brain;the question presented itself under quite a new aspect.
