In fact, everything here seemed gigantic—the carpets, the cupolas, and the crosses, the arrows, the men, the dogs, the animals. And the horses of Tsarskoye Sielo.

In his eyes, the world had exploded and multiplied. He did not consider all that he discovered to be “magnificent,” as the giaours always tried to make him admit. The universe of the infidels did not seem more beautiful or more prosperous or even all that different. But big, yes, infinitely vast. He had known the chains of the Caucasus, the interlacing mountains that rose to the sky, barring the horizon, immense mountains whose rose-colored peaks seemed to break through the sun. But they had never crushed him as the massiveness of Russia did. He had known wind and storms, but the wind here made him breathless. It made him feel as though he were being swept away, swallowed up, drowned.

He found this omnipresent sense of oppression exhausting. It took away his spirit. It deprived him of desire and of his will to escape. Nothing attracted him here, not in the fields or anywhere else. The imperious call of the horses was the only thing that brightened his dull spirit and made it respond.

The horses were here. When he spit on his hands and caressed their nostrils, grabbed them gently by the nose and pulled their heads down to his shoulder and murmured his endless litanies in their ears, he was speaking their language. The horses obeyed his voice—just as they had at home.


Among all these magnificent animals was a sorrel mare who was his favorite. She would see him coming from a distance, flatten her ears and charge him from across the field, head down like a bull. He knew this game. She wanted to show him that she was beautiful and still fearsome. He stood his ground. She would stop just before him, turning around him, trying to nip him. But she never actually tore his shirt, and eventually she would turn her back in feigned indifference and trot away. When she had reached just the right distance, she would spin around abruptly and gallop forward to charge him anew. Chestnut coat gleaming and large, black, liquid eyes shining, she would stop just short of him like a streak of fire, rearing and pawing the ground. A display of honor. Her dance over, she would let him approach. He moved slowly, his hand reaching no higher than her muzzle, touching only her mouth. Their saliva blended in his open palm, and he spoke to her in a singsong voice.

“You are proud. Where do you come from? Did you fight in the Caucasus, do you know my mountains? Have you heard of the imam Shamil? At home, we don’t ride big horses like you into battle. We prefer little Tartar mares for war. We can jump from one to the other, dismount and remount at a gallop. Otherwise they’re like you, noble and faithful. When their riders are wounded and there’s nothing they can do, they lie down and serve as a shield for them. They are the first to die. Did you ever lie down to protect your master? You must be very brave if the czar granted you both peace and liberty. He can’t be all bad, if he takes care of you even though you no longer serve him. Koura, my horse, has never had clover to eat, not even in the summer, in the clearings in Chechnya. But he had fine legs and his eyes were as beautiful as yours. He could cover fifty versts without a pause, and I’m not exaggerating. Were they the czar’s friends too, the ones who are buried among the trees? What wonderful feats did they accomplish? Will you go and sleep with them one day, in this garden?”

He gazed toward the large white slabs aligned along the lane, a little way away. Like the scholars, the ancients, and the saints, the horses in this country were buried in tombs. Their names, forever united with their riders’, their dates of birth and of death, and the history of their exploits were all engraved in stone, so that posterity would honor their memory. Jamal Eddin understood. At home, too, the djighits sang of the valiant deeds of their faithful mounts. They mourned their dead companions and honored them. He wouldn’t have thought of forcing the little gate that marked the entry to the sanctuary in the shadow of the stables or of climbing over it. Not for any lack of desire or curiosity, but precisely because his intrusion would have amounted to a profanation.

“When you’re no longer here, I’ll come and visit you in your cemetery. It won’t be a sacrilege, because we know and respect each other. But I’m talking nonsense. In a few days, the parade marks the end of the school year, and then, it will be over for me. I’m old, like you. I’m ten years old, and that’s the age limit at the orphanage of Tsarskoye Sielo. It looks like they’ll send me far away from here, maybe to Saint Petersburg, maybe somewhere else. I don’t want to leave you,” he murmured with passion, “abandon you the way I had to abandon Koura. How old are you? Let me see your teeth. You’re much older than I thought you were. We’ll never see each other again.”

He had placed his hand lightly on her withers, moved it slowly all along her back to the beginning of her hindquarters. Eyes half-closed, his nose in her mane, he could see the colorless, flat countryside beyond the trees.

“I know you’re not strong enough anymore. I know you shouldn’t.”

With the sure fingertips of a connoisseur, he pressed lightly on the muscles where her rump began. The mare’s ears perked up, she snorted a deep breath and turned toward him with her large, black eyes.

“But do you want to? Do you?”

Consumed, like him, with a desire to melt into the plain, she stretched her neck in anticipation.

“One last time?”

He grabbed a clump of mane at her withers, stepped back, and leaped on her back. She took off like a shot. They crossed the field beneath the moon at a silent gallop, a dazzling farewell.


When they reached the fence that separated the field from the cadets’ courtyard, he leaned back as though pulling on invisible reins, took his weight off one side, and dug a heel into the other, making her pivot.

“I know, you would have liked to have jumped. And died, perhaps. I understand.”

Against her will, he slowed her gait to a walk as they headed back to the stables. He spoke to her softly.

“Don’t be afraid of what’s going to happen. For the past two years, I’ve decided I’m already dead. Don’t be scared. Imagine, like me, that you’re going off to battle, but you’re already dead. If you live for one more day, take it as a gift from God. And don’t ask for one minute more.

“Yes, you’re old, but you’re wise too. So tell me something. What should I think of the Great White Czar?”

The First Cadet Corps of Saint Petersburg August 1841–September 1845 “We, the Cadets of the 1840s” By Alexander Alexeyevitch Milyutin

Extracts of an article from a

Moscow military journal from June 1904


“[…] I have been asked to collect my memories and describe our life in the First Cadet Corps of Saint Petersburg in the 1840s, when I shared a room with Jamal Eddin Shamil, the son of the famous imam. I don’t feel any particular need to do so, but since I am one of the last surviving members of the class, I acquiesced, and I shall begin.

“My name is Alexander Alexeyevitch Milyutin. I am the youngest of the Milyutins, who gave Russia the reforms we all know. But, unlike my older brothers, I have accomplished nothing that justifies my taking up the pen as I have been asked to do. I did not reorganize the army, like my brother Dmitri Alexeyevitch, nor did I work for the emancipation of the serfs, like my brother Nicholas Alexeyevitch. I wasn’t even a childhood friend of Leo Tolstoy, like my brother Vladimir Alexeyevitch.

“A short while after the death of my mother, when I was about ten, our uncle, Count Pavel Dmitrievitch Kiselyev, succeeded in obtaining for me what he had failed to obtain for the others. He convinced the Grand Duke Mikhaïl Pavlovitch to have me accepted as a cadet in the First Corps, the most prestigious military school in the Empire, and the most difficult to be admitted to after the Pages’ Corps. The First Cadet Corps only accepted the offspring of the most illustrious families, whose ancestors had been cadets themselves. We stayed there for eight years. When we left, we became officers in one of the imperial family’s regiments. The Czar was so fond of this institution that he had his own sons educated there. As for me, I belonged to the minor nobility and I was poor. That Count Kiselyev’s patronage should extend to my humble person was a miracle. I was drunk with joy.

“The cadets, friends of my older brothers who often came to my uncle’s home, tried to temper my enthusiasm with a few warnings. It was no use, I was swept up in the honor of having been admitted to such a company. For example, they insisted that I should prepare to be beaten by the older cadets. That even if they broke my bones, even if I bled like an ox, I would have to defend myself alone and without complaint. They also told me that, if anyone asked me who had done this to me, I must reply, ‘I don’t know.’ If a superior should punish me for not having answered his question, even if he should beat me, starve me, and put me in solitary confinement, I should still reply, ‘I don’t know.’ In short, they initiated me into what they called ‘the rules of Corps life’ and assured me that I would suffer at first.

“The school was housed in the Menchikov Palace, just as it is today, next to the Beaux Arts Academy on Vassilievsky Island. It consisted of a complex of austere buildings with several courtyards, stables, an equestrian ring, and huge rooms for fencing and gymnastics. Although it seemed immense at first, I soon found it cramped.