Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 24 September 1876 (12 September) — Wolf Hunt and Prince's Declaration

I wonder how the Prince's hair is doing — I was so bored last evening that I burned part of it off, by his own admission.
It is beginning to grow cold, and it was with considerable reluctance that I let myself be woken at seven. At eight I was still trying to gain a few more moments, and at nine I entered the drawing room in my black velvet toque, my black riding habit pinned up so as to display my arms embroidered at the top of the boots.
The hunters were all there: Kamensky, a Porthos; Volkovitsky, a Fury from Iphigénie en Tauride; Pavelko, a dreadful lawyer; Salko, an execrable architect; Schwabé, the owner of seventeen hunting dogs; Lihovtich, a functionary nearly as enormous as Kamensky; a man whose name I do not know; my father; Michel; Paul.
All of them examining the guns, discussing cartridges, drinking tea, and exchanging jokes as flat as they were vulgar. I except my father and our two young men.
Pavelko, that lackey, had brought his horse from Poltava for me — I was about to mount it, but the pretty animal reared and shied sideways; I barely had time to jump onto the threshold. Our Cicero was left with his horse, and it was as well I left it to him — the moment he touched the saddle the beast threw him.
I took my place with my father and our two guns. Four carriages followed close behind.
Do you know how a wolf drive is organised in Russia?
And first, forgive me if I make hunting barbarisms — I don't know the first word of the subject.
For a week already the hunt had been announced in the commune, to the starosta or bailiff, in order to assemble a sufficient number of men — but owing to a fair in Poltava, only a hundred or a hundred and twenty arrived at the meeting point.
[In the margin: In the end there were over two hundred men, and nets were stretched over a distance of six to eight kilometres. Prince Kotchoubey had sent his nets, being unable to come himself.]
I was shivering. My father lined us all up indiscriminately on either side of the road, counted us, then divided us into two sections — the armed and the unarmed. Among the peasants there proved to be about twenty gun-bearers; the rest were distributed spears — that is, long poles with an iron fleur-de-lis at the tip, like the ancient Gauls. These spears are for cowardly killing the beast caught in the nets.
The two troops of peasants went — one to the left, one to the right — in order to join behind the forest and surround it more effectively.
The nets are stretched in such a way that the animal, driven by the shouting of the men, should come to be caught in them — having first passed before the hunters who are posted in ambush before the nets.
There — we are about to begin. The Polish steward on horseback, in an oilcloth cap shaped like a helmet, his spear in hand — which, horseman though he is, touches the ground and yet rises above his head — gallops, comes and goes, and does nothing.
I cock my gun, adjust my game bag containing a handkerchief and a pair of gloves, cough — and I am ready. Each person chooses the best spot; my father designates mine and positions himself some distance away.
So here I am, alone in the middle of the forest, a fully loaded and cocked gun in my hands, damp in my feet and cold everywhere. My steel heels sank into the earth softened by yesterday's rain, which increased the cold by preventing me from moving about.
What do you think I did the moment I was alone? Oh! It is very simple — I... first looked at what one could see: through the trees, a sky — grey and cold; then I looked around me and saw tall trees already autumned [sic]; and noticing my father's cloak on the ground, I stretched out upon it and fell to dreaming that we were hunting... with a grand duke who was in love with me, that he found himself alone with me and declared his love — at that instant I feel something warm very close to me, I turn... heavens!... three creatures... as gentle as caressing — the big black dog and the two small black dogs, Joux I and Joux II.
At last I made out a gunshot — the signal. Immediately the shouts of our peasants, still very far away; as they drew nearer my reverie receded, and when they were close enough to create that emotion always produced by the shouts of a great many people all crying together, even in fun, I sprang to my feet, grabbed my gun, and pricked up my ears along with my three dogs. The shouts were growing nearer — I could already hear the blows being struck on the branches with the spears, to increase the noise.
At every moment I seemed to hear cracklings in the undergrowth, for wolves prefer thick coverts; the shouting grew louder and louder over there, and when the first men appeared, my heart was bounding in cascading leaps — I think I even trembled for an instant. But the men were driving nothing before them; the nets were empty. On inspection only a poor hare was found there, which the giant Kamensky killed with a kick — the abominable brute.
One by one all the other hunters arrived; we congratulated one another on the general bad luck and walked rather gaily towards the plain, where under a haystack we disposed ourselves to eat salted things and drink brandy. The peasants (one hundred and twenty men) were regaled with roasted mutton, meat pies, and brandy. It seems grandiose, but it is simply the natural thing in Russia. Those brave animals — no, men — examined curiously this creature half woman, half man, and rather more woman, who carried a gun and smiled at them with her whole mouth. My father spoke to them about the horse requisitioning law — I thought he was haranguing them for Serbia.
Rested, we ventured back into the dark woods. But since this time it was hares rather than wolves we were hunting, we had to walk and walk and walk, following the twenty-nine dogs [followed] by the huntsman Prince Kotchoubey had sent yesterday. The sun appeared, and I might have become cheerful had fatigue not replaced dampness; my father followed the barking of the dogs and I followed my father, through the trees with their interlaced branches, which would have given pause to anyone more squeamish than myself; but to each thing its place — at a hunt one is not at a ball or in a drawing room, so it is ridiculous to complain; better not to go at all. After two hours of walking we had not seen the tail of a hare. Encounters are exciting, even when one misses — this wholesome waiting made me impatient, and finding our carriage I returned with my father [to the paternal roof].
I had myself rubbed with perfume, dressed, and went down to rejoin the others, who had brought back three hares.
I was admirably pretty (speaking relatively always — as pretty as I am capable of being). Modesty? Fie then — but it was wasted: not one of these monsters resembles a man.
With the peasants I am expansive and familiar; with my social equals I am agreeable enough, I think; but with that riffraff! To avoid talking to them I played cards and lost about a hundred francs to the giant.
Volkovitsky then told us Jewish anecdotes, and with this little entertainment and two meals we managed to reach eleven o'clock.
They played again, and I went into the library to write a letter to a horse dealer in St Petersburg. Naturally the prince followed me, and after beseeching me to give him my hand to kiss — which I did after ten minutes and with not too much reluctance — the little man, having looked at me, having sighed, begun and interrupted several exclamations, asked me my age.
— Seventeen.
— Well then, when you are twenty... five I shall court you.
— Ah! Capital.
He examined me for a few moments, then:
— And then... then you will reject me? [Blacked out: Oh! Oh!]
Do you see that calculation, that scheme, that project? I read it in his face, in his eyes; I guessed it from what had gone before — and it struck me as so amusing, so very amusing, that I told the Princess and my father, begging them to say nothing to the little man, who, frightened, had taken refuge in the red house and returned quite confused, not knowing what face my father would make at him. Had I not guessed — that is, had he not meant to say what I understood — he would not have fled and would not afterwards have told me a heap of nonsense resembling complaints, reproaches, everything and nothing.

Notes

A battue — a driven hunt where beaters drive game towards waiting hunters. ↩
Starosta — the Russian/Ukrainian village elder or headman. ↩
al paterno tetto — Italian: "to the paternal roof." In Italian in the original. ↩