"No, not he."
" God be with him, he is rich and stupid. Who then? Eletsky? Lvoff? It cannot be Ragouzinsky? I cannot think of anybody else. For whom, then, does the Czar want Natasha?"
"For the negro Ibrahim."
The old lady uttered a cry and clasped her hands. Prince Likoff raised his head from the pillow, and with astonishment repeated:
"For the negro Ibrahim?"
"My dear brother!" said the old lady in a tearful voice: "do not destroy your dear child, do not deliver poor little Natasha into the clutches of that black devil."
"How?" replied Gavril Afanassievitch: "refuse the Emperor, who promises in return to bestow his favour upon us and all our house."
"What!" exclaimed the old Prince, who was now wide awake: "Natasha, my granddaughter, to be married to a bought negro."
"He is not of common birth," said Gavril Afanassievitch: "he is the son of a negro Sultan. The Mussulmen took him prisoner and sold him in Constantinople, and our ambassador bought him and presented him to the Czar. The negro's eldest brother came to Russia with a considerable ransom and——"
"We have heard the story of Bova Korolevitch[1] and Erouslana Lazarevitch."[1]
"My dear Gavril Afanassievitch!" interrupted the old lady, "tell us rather how you replied to the Emperor's proposal."
"I said that we were under his authority, and that it was our duty to obey him in all things."
