“Not so. My pledge to retain you in office was made dependent upon my father’s deposition. But you took from him not his crown only, but his life. As you have broken faith with me, I count it no wrong to break faith with you. Gentlemen, you will retire from the city to your country seats.”
“No greater punishment than that?” said the Empress.
“And there await my further pleasure,” Alexander added.
The discomfited ministers withdrew.
“The slave of his mother,” sneered Benningsen. “Our power is over. Dismissal to-day; to-morrow Siberia, if that old hag has her way.”
The ministers gone, Alexander turned a gratified face upon the Empress.
“Mother, you have done well,” he said, stooping to kiss her. “Thanks to a picture I enjoy a sense of freedom unknown before. Who is the artist that has done us such good service?”
“The Englishman, Lord Courtenay.”
The Czar’s face fell. His new-found pleasure vanished as he heard that name.[1]
[1] It may interest those readers, unversed in Russian history, to know that the murder of Paul took place in a manner differing little from that described in Chap. XV., and that the fact, concealed at first from the public, was made known by means of a picture painted by the command of the Empress Mary. The downfall of the Pahlen Ministry immediately followed.