Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

INTEEROGATES MADAME DE CUSTINE.35

The accusation was serious. My mother at first maintained that the leather was not English, hut the shoe-making president insisted on the fact.

" It is possible that it may be," my mother at length conceded; " you ought to know better than I. All that I can say is, that I have never procured any thing from England."

They tried it on her foot: it fitted her. " Who is your shoemaker?" demanded the president. She named him. He had been the fashionable shoemaker at the commencement of the revolution.

" A bad patriot," observed the jealous hump-back.

" A good shoemaker!" remarked my mother.

" We would imprison him," replied the president, " but the aristocrat has concealed himself. Do you know where he is ? "

My mother answered in the negative, and intimated that if she did she would not tell.

Her courageous answers, which contrasted strangely with her timid mien; the species of involuntary irony to which these scenes, alike burlesque and tragic in their character, excited her; the exquisite beauty of her person; her youth; her widow's dress; the expression of her face, at once wayward and resigned ; her air, lofty in spite of herself; her perfectly easy and elegant manners ; her celebrity, already national; the dignity of misfortune; the unequalled accent of her silver voice; and, finally, the instinct of the woman, that constant desire to please, which always succeeds when it is innate and consequently natural, — all contributed to win the hearts of her judges, hard and cruel as they were; in short, all felt favourably disposed towards her except the little hunchback. с 6