“And I do it for the love of the thing, and I suppose that’s about the difference between us.”
“Monsieur is monsieur,” he replied with a comical, lachrymose air. “But you will need to be very cautious. You have friends in Petersburg, probably?”
“No, indeed. No one knows of my presence here.”
“That is strange—but perhaps—convenient. You would not be missed.”
“No, not by a soul except here in the Palace.”
He smiled mysteriously.
“If you are discovered, m’sieur, I should not let that fact be known. I should speak of many. A friendless man may be a helpless one.”
“You have a pleasant imagination, Pierre.”
“Russia is not France, m’sieur, nor America,” he replied, cryptically, with so lugubrious an air that I smiled.
It was not a cheerful send-off, and in the carriage I told old Kalkov what his man had said.