"Then," replied Basil Mierowitz, with growing sternness, "we have not an hour to lose. Who informed him?"
"Lieutenant-General Weymarn, by a special messenger, while I was loitering at Louga."
"So, so! By our Lady of Kazan, we must be prompt in action. I have cruised thrice round Schlusselburg disguised as a fisherman, and know well all the approaches."
"Basil, Usakoff, I implore you by all you hold dear on earth and sacred in Heaven to pause while there is yet time—to abandon your wild scheme, and make your peace, if possible, with the Empress."
"You were right to add 'if possible,' my friend," replied the other calmly but bitterly. "Already compromised by desertion, my father and betrothed wife chained in a fortress by the Neva, what terms would Catharine offer us? Carl Ivanovitch," he added, with a lofty smile, "I do not press you to join us, or seek to lure you into the dangers of an enterprise the enthusiasm of which you cannot share. I do not seek even to turn your presence as a trusted staff officer in Schlusselburg to account, though it might further our objects, and be the means, perhaps, by strategy, of saving many a valuable life. Still less do I desire to turn to account your intimacy with the young Emperor Ivan, though I envy you that great privilege. Even in the love I bear my sister (though it might tempt you to cast your lot with us—with her shall I say?), I leave you unquestioned and free."
"I thank you, Basil," said Balgonie sadly, and with a heightened colour, caused by irrepressible annoyance at the last remark of Mierowitz.
"But we have all sworn before the altar of our Lady of Kazan, and the image of St. Sergius, to devote our lives to the matter in hand; so retreat is impossible—advice and entreaty alike unavailing."
Balgonie felt an acute pang on hearing this; for he knew that in Russia no place was esteemed as more holy than the church of our Lady of Kazan in St. Petersburg. Around its shrine—the sanctum sanctorum of which no woman has ever entered—are the keys of conquered cities, the banners of a thousand slaughtered armies, and the batons and sabres of their leaders, the Frenchman, the Turk, the Pole, the Persian, and the Dane, the Swede and the German; and he knew, too, that no image, to the Muscovite mind, is more sacred than that of St. Sergius—the same absurd idol which the Kazan column bore with them at the battle of the Alma, and displayed in vain to the advancing bayonets of old Sir Colin's Highland Brigade.
"The blow once struck," resumed Basil, "we shall be joined by the Cossacks of the Ukraine and the Don, among whom we have many impatient adherents, and by all who hold of the Houses of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, of Holstein Grottorp, and of all who hate Anhalt Zerbst; all Russia will soon follow, from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the White—from Revel to the Ural Mountains. We have not forgotten the reign of Elizabeth: how many noses were slit, how many foreheads were branded, how many ears cropped, and tongues shortened, and how many eyes were darkened for ever during that time of tyranny; how many backs flayed by the knout; how many nobles banished to Siberia, or drowned in prison vaults by the swollen waters of the Neva. Pure nationality is dying now; but we must revive Russia—not as it is ruled by a lascivious woman and her jealous lovers, but Holy Russia of Peter the Great—strong, invincible, and the terror alike of the Eastern and Western world. Let us save our country from those who oppress it, and replace upon its throne the Grand Duke, the Czar—the Emperor Ivan; for the right given by God and by inheritance can never be destroyed!"
A murmur of applause from his followers succeeded this outburst (which we can render but feebly in English), and they clashed their weapons in approval, while, fired by her brother's energy, Natalie sung a verse of a well known Russian song:—