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JOHN BAYLEY
unwelcome presence in his house of Natalia's two elder sister, who had
come to the capital to find husbands. Ekaterina Goncharova fell for
d'Anthes, who made use of this as a pretext for frequent visits to Natalia.
Pushkin had received anonymous notes informing him of his election to
"The Serene Order of Cuckolds," implying that his wife had become the
Tsar's mistress. This was almost certainly not the case, although after her
husband's death she may have become for a short while
maftresse en titre
to the Tsar. Such cruel facetiousness was just what would upset the poet
most, and believing the Dutch ambassador was behind it, he challenged
him to a duel. But the old man denied everything, and the quarrel was
patched up for a time when d' Anthes actually became engaged to Na–
talia's sister, the nominal object of his pursuit, and they got married.
Natalia was much upset and came to her husband for comfort and
reassurance. In her diary Countess Fiquelmont, of the capital's
beau
monde,
suggested that Natalia wanted Pushkin to tell her her handsome
admirer still loved her and had only married her sister as second best.
Pushkin seems to have advised his wife with tenderness and good sense
and asked her to behave with decorum. But it was a fact that her
brother-in-law was soon as attentive as ever, and Pushkin was tormented
beyond measure by the amusement of society, and its patronage of an
increasingly farcical situation. A duel, if he survived it, would certainly
mean exile to his estate and the end of this Petersburg nightmare. He sent
a note so offensive to the ambassador and his adopted son that d'Anthes
challenged him, and a duel was fought the next day in a quiet suburb
deep in snow. D'Anthes, who was a crack shot, fired first and Pushkin
was fatally wounded. Prostrate, he managed to fire his own shot and
slightly wound his opponent. He died two days later and was buried at
the monastery near Mikhailovskoye, his funeral attended by a great
crowd of all classes. The Tsar wrote to Pushkin on his deathbed, urging
him to die as a Christian and promising to look after his family. His
debts were paid and his widow received a pension, afterwards marrying
an officer who had been of their circles. D'Anthes was expelled from
Russia and returned to France where he entered politics and died in
1895. He never expressed the smallest penitence or regret for having
killed Russia's greatest poet.
•
In his later years, when he had taken to wntmg mostly prose,
Pushkin did his work almost entirely at the small country estate of
Boldino, in the months of October and early November. These
"Boldino autumns," as they have come to be called, were productive of
an astonishingly varied quantity of marvellous compositions. Like the
im–
provisatore
of his own fragmentary medley, "Egyptian Nights," Pushkin
