Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin

demonstrated that he was a talented and indefatigable worker. They say Vladimir Lvovich was genuinely completely transformed, absolutely abandoned his dueling, and began behaving toward the fair sex with the most circumspect discretion. He managed his first responsible mission—the eradication of the self-castrating Skoptsy sect in one of the northern provinces, so decisively and energetically that he earned praise from the emperor himself as well as his benefactor and was even granted an audience by the ruler. But it is only natural that vicious tongues will always be found to slander anyone favored by Fortune. It was said that the chief procurator’s new favorite was concerned not so much for the great future of Russia as for his own future within that of Russia, but is this not a reproach that can ultimately be leveled at all servants of the state, with only extremely rare exceptions?
    Such was the unusual envoy despatched by the supreme church authorities to the sleepy realm of Zavolzhie, in order to provoke revolution and upheaval in it. And the method to which Vladimir Lvovich had recourse in order to achieve his as yet not entirely clear goals was so original that it deserves to be described in detail.
             
    THE EMISSARY OF the Holy Synod began by making a series of visits, beginning with the governor himself, as required by common courtesy and the official nature of his visit.
    Anton Antonovich, already apprised of all the information given above concerning his visitor from the capital, expected to see a neophyte, a sort of Matthew the Publican, that most dangerous variety of the tribe of guardians of the faith, and therefore adopted an attitude of extreme caution in advance. However, Ludmila Platonovna, whose imagination had been caught not so much by this bandit’s spiritual re-birth as by his previous transgressions, was inclined decisively and irreconcilably against him, although inwardly she was also a little fearful. The governor’s wife pictured the appearance in her drawing room of an infernally handsome devil, a devourer of innocent maidens, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and she readied herself, on the one hand, not to submit to his satanic charms, and, on the other, to put the upstart in his place from the very beginning, for Zavolzhsk was not debauched St. Petersburg, where the women were immoral and loose.
    It need hardly be said that in such an empty provincial backwater any man with a reputation like Bubentsov’s, even though his appearance might not be particularly advantageous, would have every chance of appearing to be, if not strikingly handsome, then at least an “interesting character.”
    Even so, at first the governor’s wife felt a profound disappointment. The gentleman who entered the drawing room with a bow was frail, not to say puny. He appeared to be about thirty years of age, with extremely mobile joints (“wobbly,” thought Ludmila Platonovna, who was fond of simple, sweeping definitions). To be fair, however, she did acknowledge that her visitor had a good figure, and the elastic flexibility of a rapier blade could be sensed in his narrow frame, but that merely lent Vladimir Lvovich a disadvantageous similarity to the local dandy Monsieur Dudeval, the dance teacher at the Zavolzhsk boarding school for noble girls. Nor did Bubentsov prove to be handsome of face: sharp features, somewhat predatory, a beak of a nose, bright unblinking eyes somehow reminiscent of an owl’s. A certain attractiveness was lent to this physiognomy only by the sweeping eyebrows and long, soft eyelashes. Ludmila Platonovna supposed that these must be what he had used to seduce his unfortunate victims. But winning the favor of the mistress of the governor’s mansion required rather more substantial qualities, as she gave him to understand by not proffering her hand for a kiss.
    At the beginning of the conversation she liked the St. Petersburg fop even less. His voice proved to be low and