Iván Volenski now leaned across the table and said, turning to the president—
“I am proud and happy to feel that it is in my power to render the brotherhood so great a service. I will convey the letter, the news, and the papers, safely to Petersburg.”
Many hands were stretched across the table towards the young Pole, who grasped them warmly.
“When can you start?” asked Mirkovitch.
“In about two days,” replied Iván.
“Too late, cannot you go before?”
“Impossible! The Nuncio leaves Vienna the day after to-morrow. I shall be forced to remain twenty-four hours longer to finish and classify his correspondence, after that I am free and can start immediately.”
“Let Iván act as he thinks best,” said the president; “not one of us could cross the frontier as safely as he, and a delay of three days is not so dangerous as the entrusting of the papers to anyone else.”
“So far I have never been suspected,” said Volenski reassuringly; “true, those brutes on the frontier did seize and search all my papers once,” he added sullenly; “that was after Dunajewski’s arrest, when every Pole was an object of that type of tyranny. Fortunately I was carrying nothing compromising then.”
“And this time?” asked an anxious voice.