It's 2,000 versts to Yekaterinburg. Oh, my goodness!
About 7,000 to Irkutsk. Unbelievable!
And 800 more to Nerchinsk...
Yes, Princess.
Byron. Plutarch.
I understand your feelings, Princess.
But in such matters I'm obliged to follow the established regulations.
Of course, Your Majesty.
Count Orlov's seamstress was allowed to follow her convicted husband
to Siberia.
Have you been inspired by a common woman's act?
The seamstress was not losing much, whereas you...
The law cannot deprive a noble woman of what's allowed to a commoner.
By insisting on the rights of commoners,
a woman of noble birth may reduce herself to...
Everything is ready, Count!
Catherine, my poor child!
To flee the French Revolution, only to give your daughter to a conspirator!
Support us, o Lord, in well-being and prosperity...
Save, Lord, thy servant...
Yes, Princess.
Let's go, with God's help!
Mommy, let's go! Let's go, mommy!
Mommy, let's go!
Wait.
Your Majesty!
Wait!
Will you please speak Russian?
I don't speak Russian.
Come closer.
- What would you like? - Hear me out, Sire!
Your Majesty, as a special favour,
please allow me to join Lieutenant Annenkov in his exile.
Is he your husband?
I would have wedded him
if I wished to transgress the bounds of propriety.
I've decided on that daring act
after learning that Russian women who wished to follow their husbands
found compassion in you.
But this is not your country, Madame!
I'll renounce my country.
Take her petition.
Your Majesty!
Stop, I beg you!
Europe talks about your mercifulness to the families of the wretched men.
A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country.
Europe didn't doubt my heart.
I'll give you the answer in 3 days.
To own serfs, to revel in luxury,
and to consider oneself free?
For heaven's sake, gentlemen!
Will the life of our gentry forever stagnate from corruption and idleness?
Isn't that ignominy going to arouse shame and disgust in us?
What will you say, Lieutenant?
I'm ashamed of the class I belong to.
I'm a slave, just like my mother's house serfs.
The only difference is that I'm conscious of my enslavement.
Natalie, baby, where are you going?
Fedya!
Sometimes I even treated my old servant who adored me
in the manner of a true son of my mother.
Where were you hiding, Fedya?
All right, I'm forgiving you this time.
Thank you very much, sir.
The other day your mother bought 100 yards of fabric for a dress.
Don't talk rubbish.
And it's not the first time.
As soon as there's an expensive fabric on sale, she buys it all,
so that in all Moscow,
and not only in Moscow,
in all Russia, only she had a dress like that.
Ivan!
Oh, Our Lady in Heaven, save Vanechka from trouble!
Brush it up.
Stop jerking the comb!
Let me see. All right, leave that lock there.
I'm sick and tired of you, Ivan.
The last time you killed someone in a duel, now you've lost 60 thousand.
Tomorrow morning you're going to St. Petersburg.
I'm not giving you any cash. You'll be fed by Fedka on your way.
I myself will pay your debt. Don't dare meet your brother.
Come on, kiss my hand!
And don't dare coming to me in Moscow without my permission!
Sir Roland squeezed her hand...
Oh God, the same pleasantness,
the same loveliness on that dear face.
"Don't squeeze my hand so, Sir Roland," I interrupted his speech.
"You will sadden me if you make me repeat..."
Mademoiselle Pauline!
Champagne is poured in a flow, And misty view somewhat obscured,
With everything, just take and go, With everything as if for good.
A wooden cross it'll be, or leaden, With which to death we're betrothed.
Don't ever promise to a maiden Eternal love on our earth.
Only inequality stood between me and her.
You may not believe me, Sire, but my arrest had even made me happy.
The barrier that stood in the way of our union with her has disappeared.
At last I'm stripped of all rights, of my fortune, of my status of gentry.
Wait!
Stand back!
I would gladly pardon you, Cavalry Guard.
Only tell me, since you knew of the conspiracy, why didn't you report it?
Did you hear the question? Answer it!
Well?.
It's not honourable to report on your comrades.
What do you know about honour?!
- Do you know what you deserve? - Death, Sire.
Do you expect to be shot?
And cut an interesting figure?
No.
I'll make you rot in prison.
What are you doing?!
What's on your mind?
And you, why didn't you watch him?
What for?
I'm not going to live.
- Faster! - We can't go faster than that...
Hurry up, please! Quick! Go!
We need to change horses, and where can we get new ones?
- Here. - Thank you very much.
Somehow or other. Come what may! Faster!
We'll get you there!
Jean!
Wait! Stop!
Jean! Jean! Don't leave!
The Emperor's answer!
- How long will we stay here? - I guess we can fix it in a week.
Seven days?!
It's been badly broken, Your Excellency, we rode like crazy!
We'll have to travel by relay horses.
- But it means a springless cart. - Other people use it.
People? Only mouzhiks and convicts.
- Did they carry them on carts? - Sure thing.
God will help us.
What's the matter, Charles?
Madame, think about your parents!
I promised them that we return if the journey is dangerous.
I'm in despair! Why didn't I convince you to spend the night in Tomsk?
I've seen a wolf!
Princess Yekaterina Ivanovna has ordered to take you to Tomsk.
I've got the money for our journey to St. Petersburg and your salary.
She took her carefully
and brought her home,
made a little nest, just like for Mikola Sergeyevich,
put Katechka in there and went to the woods to pick mushrooms...
"I'm always under surveillance, even more strict
than in a fortress.
You must obey your sense of responsibility.
You're a mother and a daughter.
I'm ready to sacrifice everything, if only it will give you peace.
My precious friend Marie!
Whatever you may decide,
and even if this decision will deprive me of the hope of ever seeing you,
that sorrow of mine will be alleviated by the belief
that you fully partake of my plight
and that your decision was caused by the cruel circumstances."
I don't believe it!
I'll never reproach you for anything.
Darling Sergey!
Nikolai Pavlovich questioned me at some length about the prince.
Of course, I tried to vindicate Sergey as well as I could.
But it was impossible to belittle the prince's guilt.
The Tsar even said that Volkonsky is unworthy of our sympathy.
I wouldn't have stopped to extirpate my respect for him
and consider my daughter's obligations annulled.
But I understand her: nothing is worse than eternal separation from him.
Don't worry, father.
I have no other troubles except those that concern Sergey.
I guess one has to have a stronger willpower,
not to devote oneself to those who need it.
I know I will be able to endure anything being beside Sergey.
You want to bury yourself alive?
In the name of what? Volkonsky is a conspirator!
Your foremost duty now is your son! You're going to kill your son!
Enough!
Only a year ago you were persuading me of my fiance's virtues.
And today you deny me a consolation.
I want you to know that I love my husband.
And I expect from you at least a little compassion.
You're deceiving yourself. You don't feel anything for him.
I guess it's the Volkonsky women's letters that speak for her.
Oh, God...
And first of all, his mother's, who'd gone out of her mind long ago.
They convinced her she's a heroine, and she tortures herself like a fool.
Look, Masha, if I knew that you were going there for love,
that your delusion would not dissipate,
I would have agreed to bury you alive.
I would've wept over you with tears of blood and let you go, nonetheless.
I can use my power to stop you. But, please, stop yourself!
Coming to your senses in Siberia would be a tragedy for you.
Have pity for your father, Marie!
Masha!
Princess Yekaterina Ivanovna! Welcome!
You're the last person I expected to see in this house.
Governor Tsejdler at your service. Please, have a seat.
Allow me to remain standing.
I understand. It's no laughing matter: so many versts on our bad roads.
- Pafnuti! - Yes, I know, Your Excellency!
Could you tell me...
why I was not given horses?
There must be none.
It's strange, because the postmaster pleaded some ban.
Yes, yes, yes... Excuse me.
You see, I must inform you about something.
If you wish to proceed to Nerchinsk,
I'm obliged to inform you of the measures to be applied to you.
If I wish?
You think I've gone all that way just to meet you here?
Nevertheless, you'll have to hear me out.
Are you aware that all this will have to be sent back?
Nor are you allowed to take with you any sums of money
or valuable things.
But that is not all.
Your right to own serfs
will be revoked as soon as you move beyond Irkutsk.
So your servants will not go with you.
All right, they won't.
I suspect, Princess, that you...
You have no idea of what your life at the mines is going to be like.
You will live there like the poorest peasant.
Really?
The huts are dirty, stinking,
full of insects.
Your food will be bread and kvass.
I hate to mention the climate: it's horrible, it'll be pernicious for you.
But I'll be there with my husband.
You're right.
But don't forget, Princess, that your husband is in prison.
You'll be allowed rare visits, once a week, no more,
for one hour in a convicts' room, with an officer present.
I see... one hour... an officer... present...
Please, order them to give me horses!
Have you fully realized that all the rest time you'll be alone
among the savage population?
In the barracks you'll be surrounded by 5,000 branded convicts
belonging to the most corrupt and despicable class.
But the mines must be managed by someone?
The management won't be able to protect you from insults
which may even come to violence.
Aren't they punished there for crimes?
Princess, hardened villains
fear no punishment.
They will even deem it right to consider you their equal,
as the wife of a criminal sharing their lot.
Excuse me, Your Excellency, the samovar is boiling.
Would you like some tea, Princess Yekaterina Ivanovna?
This beverage is indispensable here.
God will help me.
Will you tell them to give me horses?
Please!
As you wish, Princess.
Written here is everything I've warned you about.
Your signature will mean you'll submit to all those measures.
Now can you send me on my way as soon as possible?
I'm sorry, Princess, but this paper
has to go to St. Petersburg for His Imperial Majesty's consideration.
By courier.
How long am I supposed to wait, General?
A month one way, a month back.
And how long it will take the Tsar to look into it and give his answer...
that, as you may understand, does not depend on me.
Will you wait? Or prefer to go back home?
Oh, God!
Don't torture yourself, Princess Yekaterina Ivanovna.
You're pure before God.
Where are you going, Madame?
Have pity!
We were told not to let you in!
Don't you hear? Have mercy!
I didn't think I would ever enter your house again.
However, before going to Siberia,
I want to give you an opportunity to regain your son's favour.
Madame has learned that her son, Grigory, was killed in a duel.
Oh, my God...
Wait.
Get out.
I see you're not of the weak kind, Mademoiselle.
But it's hard for a foreign woman to take a journey to Siberia. Don't go.
I'll buy you a house in Moscow.
You'll have everything.
Only don't leave.
As soon as I'm dead,
our relatives will take possession of everything here.
My son is young.
It won't be too hard for him.
His mother needs you much more.
It's impossible.
I know how scrupulous you are.
Take it, it will come handy in Siberia.
Give your support to Ivan.
I'm surrounded by monsters here.
The moment you leave, they'll poison me.
I'll pray for you!
Ivan doesn't deserve such a beauty.
Sure thing, dear mistress...
He doesn't deserve her, mistress, a rake what he is...
Hold your tongue!
Thank you most humbly.
She must pray and pray for Vanechka, that French trash!
As for taking your son with you...
Mommy!
...It can't be permitted... can't be permitted...
Mommy!
All my prayers are about my son, Our Lady Mother of God!
I already love the child who hasn't been born yet.
I would sooner feel affection for my husband
when I see his likeness in a child, his flesh and blood.
Help me, O Lord, help me...
To admit these feelings for the father of my future child...
It's a sin! A sin!
- Have you delivered mail? - Just as you said, sir.
- Is Masha in her room? - She went up to the children's room.
Did you call me, father? I was playing in the garden.
Sit down, Masha.
Prince Sergey Grigorievich Volkonsky asks for your hand.
The prince is a fine man, from a good family.
I'm sure you'll be happy with him.
I gave him my consent and I hope you'll do likewise.
- But, father, I don't know him. - The wedding's in a month. Now go.
My son is happy.
My husband is unhappy.
My place is beside my husband.
Marie! What will happen to father, Marie?
What have we done to deserve all this?
I will curse you, if you don't come back in a year.
Come back soon!
We all will be waiting for you, Masha!
She has shed not one tear.
She's the most remarkable woman I've ever known.
Why not retire
and enjoy the family life, raising children?
Dear Serge!
I haven't seen the Emperor for a while, and I must admit
that my feelings toward him have changed.
Should you see him, tell him the princess remembers him.
You got more cheerful, dear cousin.
When you arrived in Italy, you looked so sad.
Russian women don't like to travel.
The Russian woman's attachment to her home is unequaled.
The hot springs of Italy did you a lot of good.
You won't believe me, but the doctor has been so reassuring.
If we're to believe him, it won't be a year before I can give Sergey
a little angel.
I'll pray for you.
...Tomorrow, my dear guest, you must hear his opera.
Did you want to see me? Here I am!
- I hope I didn't disturb you? - No, I've finished already.
Don't forget: tonight we're invited to the duchess.
Why sit here for no purpose?
He is not at home!
Whenever His Excellency gets ill, he stays at his doctor's.
Getting all kinds of rubbings-in and poultices. He can't travel after that.
He must be staying overnight there, or he would've been here already.
You shouldn't have waited, Your Excellency, it's night already.
Montesquieu. "Persian Letters".
I would have brought it to you.
Please!
Too bad I couldn't receive you again.
I'm not well, I only got up because of an urgent matter.
Besides, as you know, the Emperor's answer hasn't yet...
All right... all right...
I have no good news for you, Princess.
If I'm not mistaken, this is your tenth visit here, isn't it?
Excuse me, the eleventh.
You see?.
Where's my letter, General?
Where's the paper I signed?
- Couldn't the answer get mislaid? - Oh, no, the courier...
You see?
God knows I didn't want to bother the Empress.
Pafnuti!
- The paper? - Waiting, as you said.
Send it this week. No, next week.
Shall I send it on Tuesday?
Friday. Friday will be just right.
It will be just right on Friday.
Yes, yes, yes...
Friday is just right.
Or take the varieties of Little Russia...
Or rennet, for example...
This was planted exactly in the year
that Masha was born.
What did my sister's nail mark here?
It's better to doubt nobility than virtuousness.
A coal-miner's wife deserves more respect than a prince's mistress.
How did you like the prince?
You aren't matchmaking for me, dear brother, or are you?
Well, Prince Volkonsky is one of the best eligible bachelors in Russia.
Maybe I'd better wait for a more modest suitor. Why hurry?
I'd sooner run away than become the wife of a titled dandy.
Grief's constant sister...
Hope is high...
Hope...
Hope.
Doesn't he love his Fatherland who makes sacrifices for his convictions,
who is ready to mount the scaffold for them?
Doesn't he command respect for the only reason
that he ventured a new cause before its time came?
Let's go, Your Excellency.
Get in, be so kind.
Your Excellency!
I was ordered to overtake Your Excellency.
A message from St. Petersburg.
Will you read it, please?
The wife of a state criminal is not
to leave the place of exile before her husband dies.
Even after his death, the government takes no obligation
to permit the widows of criminals to return to Russia.
Thank you.
Now tell me, how far is Yekaterinburg?
Two hundred versts, Your Excellency.
How come, Your Excellency?
Wait, I'll announce you.
But I don't know if he'll receive you.
Dear sir, you have received the answer last week.
Stop your evasions!
You know about the letter as well as I do.
Really, Princess? But I haven't read it yet.
Too bad, I didn't have the time.
Then read it, dear sir!
Certainly I will read it.
But I receive a lot of mail from His Majesty which concerns not only you.
- Maybe in a week... - Sir!
You've been keeping me waiting for almost six months!
Well, as you wish. Pafnuti!
You may read it.
At least read what's required of you.
I don't care, and you know it.
You're wrong. You're very wrong, Princess.
A wife, following her husband, will share his fate
and lose her former title of any rank,
that is, will be recognized as no other than an exiled convict's wife.
At the same time, she agrees to take any distress
that such a position may involve, namely:
children that may be begotten in Siberia
will be enlisted as factory peasants...
with no right of inheriting either the property or name of their father,
for they will be registered as serfs.
You shouldn't have tortured yourself so.
Had you listened to me in the first place, you would've been home now.
And your parents wouldn't have pined for their daughter.
Is that all? Can I go to my husband now?
Be so kind as to make arrangements for the horses.
Have you ever seen convicts in irons?
Answer me!
Why are you shouting?
Who gave you that right?
You gave it to me!
You're the wife of an exiled convict.
You yourself will be sent to Nerchinsk as a convict.
With your hands and feet in irons.
You will go with a group of convicts under convoy.
You will be tied up with the rest, as villains are, so that...
they don't escape.
And one more thing: out of 500 men we send under convoy,
no more than a third get to Nerchinsk alive.
Well?
Are you still willing?
I don't care, I just want to go.
Tell them to bring irons.
You will go, you will go...
I don't want to, I can't torture you anymore. I'm sorry, Princess.
I had been pressured to dissuade you by all possible means.
I just tried to scare you. I'll give you the horses, and may God save you.
The winter of 1826-1827 dragged on and on at the Blagodatsk mine.
No, no, let's go there.
You don't deserve the leniency you're accorded.
Leniency?
Using you in the works is a leniency to your sin.
You must prove your obedience by modesty and good behaviour.
I'm not well, and you know it, my good man.
Did you come here to take treatments?
Stand up when you're spoken to!
There, we're awake. My dear Alyonka is awake!
Now we'll eat, we'll eat...
My Goodness!
Your cheeks have frozen!
Now, have patience, mistress.
At last we're in the Promised Land.
Halt! Where are you going?
No one is to go in here.
Is Prince Volkonsky kept here?
There're no princes here, only convicts.
I have covered 7,000 versts to see my husband.
Run fast!
I pray the commandant wouldn't come here.
Oh, God! Oh, my God!
I'm so sorry!
A year later. Spring, 1828...
Do you, Praskovya, take this loann, whom you see in front of you,
as your husband, of your good and unconstrained will
and firm conviction?
Mademoiselle Gebl, do you take Jean to be your husband?
Yes!
Come what may!
My congratulations, Madame!
Hurry up!
Where are you taking him, the poor man?
I forgot to tell you...
I want you to know...
Stand back!
How dare you speak not Russian?
I don't understand...
You pledged yourself to speak only Russian!
Stand back! Are you deaf or what?
Don't dare! I'll kill you! Don't dare!
Don't dare touch her!
Scoundrels!
Bastards!
Onward, the Fatherland's sons!
Shut up!
Our hour of glory is coming! We're against tyranny!
I told you, shut up!
It does you no honour.
Restrain your heroes, General.
Stop it!
Madame, tell me everything you wanted to say
and I'll pass it on to your husband in the language which is prescribed.
I wanted to say, General,
that I'm very happy.
Your wife asked me to tell you that she's absolutely happy.
Go!
THE END © Vergilarchivum 2019