She was
very beautiful and gentle and full of exquisite caresses, and he loved
her more than all his wealth. But mad thoughts mounted to his brain,
and after making an oration to the Volga for all the riches and plunder
she had brought him, he reproached himself that he had never given this
river anything really valuable in return, and then exclaiming he would
repair his fault, unclasped the clinging arms of his mistress and flung
her overboard."
"What a horrible brute!" exclaimed Tamara, and she put down the sword.
The Prince took it up and drew it from its sheath.
"The Cossacks had a wild strain in them even in those days," he said.
"You must not be too hard on me for merely riding my horse!"
"Would you be cruel like that, too, Prince?" Tamara asked; and she sat
down for a second on the arm of a carved chair. And when he had put the
sword back in its place, he bent forward and leaned on the back of it.
"Yes, I could be cruel, I expect," he said. "I could be even brutal if
I were jealous, or the woman I loved played me false, but I would not
be cruel to her while it hurt myself. Razin lost his pleasure for days
through one mad personal act. It would have been more sensible to have
kept her until he was tired of her, or she had grown cold to him. Don't
you agree with me about that?"
"It is a horrible history and I hate it," Tamara said.
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