Shattered in my innermost soul by all that I had seen, I recovered my senses to find myself in a small dim cabin. Lifting up my head, I saw that I was shut in with that dastard Christianok, the principal author of our misery, the perpetrator of the treachery. I cannot say what astonishment I showed. My comrade, at all events, was very calm. He was lounging, and eating some bon-bons he had snatched up from the table, and glancing from time to time at our closed door.
“You’re astonished?” he asked me. “Is it not true? What wonderful things! Yes?”
“Yes, there’s enough to be astonished at!” I answered, concealing my disgust with difficulty.
“It was impossible otherwise,” said he.
“Why?”
“Because only the bait of marriage could tempt this adventuress.”
“Yes! but why play with her feelings, with her heart?” said I, impatiently.
“We should never have got her on board otherwise.”
“There were many other ways. I know myself that the count promised her on his oath to marry her, and that once his wife, she would have trusted herself with our fleet.”
“Ah! my dear Konsov, what simplicity!” chuckled the cunning knave. “Is it possible you have not yet guessed? Why, at the very moment when the count was playing with the Princess at the most tender protestations of love, I was writing under his dictation, and in his name, a letter to the empress, telling her that he had decided to do everything to catch the adventuress, and even, if need be, to tie a stone to her neck, and throw her into the river.”