The image of Michael Strogoff, struck before her eyes with
a lance and disappearing beneath the waters of the Irtych,
never left her thoughts.
Could such a man have died thus? For whom was God reserving His
miracles if this good man, whom a noble object was urging onwards,
had been allowed to perish so miserably? Then anger would
prevail over grief. The scene of the affront so strangely borne
by her companion at the Ichim relay returned to her memory.
Her blood boiled at the recollection.
"Who will avenge him who can no longer avenge himself?" she said.
And in her heart, she cried, "May it be I!" If before his death
Michael had confided his secret to her, woman, aye girl though
she was, she might have been able to carry to a successful
conclusion the interrupted task of that brother whom God had
so soon taken from her.
Absorbed in these thoughts, it can be understood how Nadia
could remain insensible to the miseries even of her captivity.
Thus chance had united her to Marfa Strogoff without her having
the least suspicion of who she was. How could she imagine that
this old woman, a prisoner like herself, was the mother of him,
whom she only knew as the merchant Nicholas Korpanoff? And on
the other hand, how could Marfa guess that a bond of gratitude
connected this young stranger with her son?
The thing that first struck Nadia in Marfa Strogoff was
the similarity in the way in which each bore her hard fate.
This stoicism of the old woman under the daily hardships,
this contempt of bodily suffering, could only be caused by a moral
grief equal to her own.
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