“H’m! I won’t come for anything.”
“Not even with me?”
“And what are you that I should go with you? I’m to sit on a mountain beside him for forty years on end—a pretty story! And upon my word, how long-suffering people have become nowadays! No, it cannot be that a falcon has become an owl. My prince is not like that!” she said, raising her head proudly and triumphantly.
Light seemed to dawn upon him.
“What makes you call me a prince, and … for whom do you take me?” he asked quickly.
“Why, aren’t you the prince?”
“I never have been one.”
“So yourself, yourself, you tell me straight to my face that you’re not the prince?”
“I tell you I never have been.”
“Good Lord!” she cried, clasping her hands. “I was ready to expect anything from his enemies, but such insolence, never! Is he alive?” she shrieked in a frenzy, turning upon Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. “Have you killed him? Confess!”