Hadji Murad

Chapter 25
Hajji Murad was allowed to go out riding in the neighborhood of the town, but never without a convoy of Cossacks. There was only half a troop of them altogether in Nukha, ten of whom were employed by the officers, so that if ten were sent out with Hajji Murad (according to the orders received) the same men would have had to go every other day. Therefore after ten had been sent out the first day, it was decided to send only five in future and Hajji Murad was asked not take all his henchmen with him. But on April the 25th he rode out with all five. When he mounted, the commander, noticing that all five henchmen were going with him, told him that he was forbidden to take them all, but Hajji Murad pretended not to hear, touched his horse, and the commander did not insist. With the Cossacks rode a noncommissioned officer, Nazarov, who had received the Cross of St. George for bravery. He was a young, healthy, brown-haired lad, as fresh as a rose. He was the eldest of a poo... (From : Wikisource.org.)

Chapter 24
Butler's only consolation all this time was the poetry of warfare, to which he gave himself up not only during his hours of service but also in private life. Dressed in his Circassian costume, he rode and swaggered about, and twice went into ambush with Bogdanovich, though neither time did they discover or kill anyone. This closeness to and friendship with Bogdanovich, famed for his courage, seemed pleasant and warlike to Butler. He had paid his debt, having borrowed the money of a Jew at an enormous rate of interest -- that is to say, he had postponed his difficulties but had not solved them. He tried not to think of his position, and to find oblivion not only in the poetry of warfare but also in wine. He drank more and more every day, and day by day grew morally weaker. He was now no longer the chaste Joseph he had been towards marya Dmitrievna, but on the contrary began courting her grossly, meeting to his surprise with a strong and decided repulse which put him to shame. (From : Wikisource.org.)

Chapter 23
By midnight his decision had been formed. He had decided that he must fly to the mountains, and break into Vedeno with the Avars still devoted to him, and either die or rescue his family. Whether after rescuing them he would return to the Russians or escape to Khunzakh and fight Shamil, he had not made up his mind. All he knew was that first of all he must escape from the Russians into the mountains, and he at once began to carry out his plan. He drew his black wadded beshmet from under his pillow and went into his henchmen's room. They lived on the other side of the hall. As soon as he entered the hall, the outer door of which stood open, he was at once enveloped by the dewy freshness of the moonlit night and his ears were filled by the whistling and trilling of several nightingales in the garden by the house. Having crossed the hall he opened the door of his henchmen's room. There was no light there, but the moon in its first quarter shone in at the window. (From : Wikisource.org.)

Chapter 22
Not having attained his aim in Chechnya, Hajji Murad returned to Tiflis and went every day to Vorontsov's, and whenever he could obtain audience he implored the Viceroy to gather together the mountaineer prisoners and exchange them for his family. He said that unless that were done his hands were tied and he could not serve the Russians and destroy Shamil as he desired to do. Vorontsov vaguely promised to do what he could, but put it off, saying that he would decide when General Argutinski reached Tiflis and he could talk the matter over with him. Then Hajji Murad asked Vorontsov to allow him to go to live for a while in Nukha, a small town in Transcaucasia where he thought he could better carry on negotiations about his family with Shamil and with the people who were attached to himself. Moreover Nukha, being a Mohammedan town, had a mosque where he could more conveniently perform the rites of prayer demanded by the Mohammedan law. Vorontsov wrote to Petersburg about... (From : Wikisource.org.)

Chapter 21
Life in our advanced forts in the Chechen lines went on as usual. Since the events last narrated there had been two alarms when the companies were called out and militiamen galloped about; but both times the mountaineers who had caused the excitement got away, and once at Vozdvizhensk they killed a Cossack and succeeded in carrying off eight Cossack horses that were being watered. there had been no further raids since the one in which the aoul was destroyed, but an expedition on a large scale was expected in consequence of the appointment of a new commander of the left flank, Prince Baryatinsky. He was an old friend of the Viceroy's and had been in command of the Kabarda Regiment. On his arrival at Grozny as commander of the whole left flank he at once mustered a detachment to continue to carry out the Czar's commands as communicated by Chernyshov to Vorontsov. The detachment mustered at Vozdvizhensk left the fort and took up a position towards Kurin, where the troops were enc... (From : Wikisource.org.)

Hajji Murad had been a week in the major's house at the fort. Although Marya Dmitrievna quarreled with the shaggy Khanefi (Hajji Murad had only brought two of his murids, Khanefi and Eldar, with him) and had turned him out of her kitchen -- for which he nearly killed her -- she evidently felt a particular respect and sympathy for Hajji Murad. She now no longer served him his dinner, having handed that duty over to Eldar, but she seized every opportunity of seeing him and rendering him service. She always took the liveliest interest in the negotiations about his family, knew how many wives and children he had, and their ages, and each time a spy came to see him she inquired as best she could into the results of the negotiations. Butler durin... (From : Wikisource.org.)

At Vozvizhensk, the advanced fort situated some ten miles from the aoul in which Hajji Murad was spending the night, three soldiers and a noncommissioned officer left the fort and went beyond the Shahgirinsk Gate. The soldiers, dressed as Caucasian soldiers used to be in those days, wore sheepskin coats and caps, and boots that reached above their knees, and they carried their cloaks tightly rolled up and fastened across their shoulders. Shouldering arms, they first went some five hundred paces along the road and then turned off it and went some twenty paces to the right -- the dead leaves rustling under their boots -- till they reached the blackened trunk of a broken plane tree just visible through the darkness. There they stopped. It was ... (From : Wikisource.org.)

When Hajji Murad appeared at the prince's palace next day, the waiting room was already full of people. Yesterday's general with the bristly mustaches was there in full uniform with all his decorations, having come to take leave. There was the commander of a regiment who was in danger of being court martialed for misappropriating commisarriat money, and there was a rich Armenian (patronized by Doctor Andreevsky) who wanted to obtain from the Government a renewal of his monopoly for the sale of vodka. There, dressed in black, was the widow of an officer who had been killed in action. She had come to ask for a pension, or for free education for her children. There was a ruined Georgian prince in a magnificent Georgian costume who was trying t... (From : Wikisource.org.)

Young Vorontsov was much pleased that it was he, and no one else, who had succeeded in winning over and receiving Hajji Murad -- next to Shamil Russia's chief and most active enemy. There was only one unpleasant thing about it: General Meller- Zakomelsky was in command of the army at Vozdvizhenski, and the whole affair ought to have been carried out through him. As Vorontsov had done everything himself without reporting it there might be some unpleasantness, and this thought rather interfered with his satisfaction. On reaching his house he entrusted Hajji Murad's henchmen to the regimental adjutant and himself showed Hajji Murad into the house. Princess Marya Vasilevna, elegantly dressed and smiling, and her little son, a handsome curly-hea... (From : Wikisource.org.)

I was returning home by the fields. It was midsummer, the hay harvest was over and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers -- red, white, and pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright yellow centers and pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented rape blossoms; tall campanulas with white and lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch; yellow, red, and pink scabious; faintly scented, neatly arranged purple plaintains with blossoms slightly tinged with pink; cornflowers, the newly opened blossoms bright blue in the sunshine but growing paler and redder towards evening or when growing old; and delicate almond-scented dodder flowers that withered qu... (From : Wikisource.org.)