“Excuse me, your Majesty,” stammered Miller; “the will of the empress—is an important guide; but there’s another, a power still higher—Russia. I am a Lutheran; the body of the recognised Dimitri lies in the cathedral of the Kremlin. What would become of all my researches, what would become of my own person, amidst your own nation, if I dared to assert that not Grishka Otropieff had ascended the Muscovite throne, but the real Tzarevitch Dimitri?”
CHAPTER XX.
MILLER’S REPLY.
The words of Miller disturbed Ekaterina very much.
“Well, candid at any rate,” thought she; “just like a philosopher.”
“Very well,” said the empress; “let the dead rest in peace; we will talk about the living. I think General Potemkin has sent you the examination, and the evidence taken in respect of that impudent Pretender, the arrest of whom you have heard about, I suppose?”
“Yes, he sent them,” answered Miller, remembering at last that the spectacles for which he had been constantly searching with his eyes were on his forehead, and wondering how he could have forgotten that.
“Well, and what have you to say of that worthy sister of the Marquis Pougachoff?” asked Ekaterina.
Miller at that very moment caught sight, through the glass door, of one of his canaries, a very quarrelsome bird, who had just flown into another’s nest, the mistress of which was twittering, flying round, and trying to turn her out. His eyes also wandered to a sick blackbird with its leg bound up.