CHAPTER III
A MENACE FROM THE CZAR
In an ante-chamber of the Vistula Palace sat Count Radzivil, premier of Czernova, in company with Marshal Zabern, the Warden of the Charter; and the Charter being the palladium of Czernovese liberty, the custody of that sacred document carried with it a high distinction, second only to that of the premiership.
The two ministers were waiting to communicate to the princess the contents of an important despatch, which had just arrived from the Czernovese ambassador at St. Petersburg; for Czernova, be it known, though but a small state, was nevertheless sufficiently wealthy to maintain an embassy at the three courts with which its interests came most in contact, namely, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin.
The only other occupants of the apartment were two silent chamberlains, standing like statues before the folding doors of the audience-chamber, each dressed in white pantaloons and silk stockings, and each decorated with the silk wand of office.
Ladislas Zabern was a man of fine soldierly presence, with limbs that seemed carved from oak and soldered with iron. Courage was indelibly stamped upon his face. He was fifty-three years of age, and though his dark hair and moustaches were streaked with gray, he had lost none of the energy of youth.
A sabre-cut marked his left cheek, for he had known fighting from early days. There was a legend current among his admirers—and they numbered every man with Polish blood in his veins—that in childhood he had been taken by his father, a patriotic noble, to the sacramental altar, and made to swear that he would be the life-long enemy of Russia.
Be that as it may, his fiery youth had been spent in vain attempts to procure the emancipation of Poland from the Russian yoke, and, as a result, he had made acquaintance with that indispensable adjunct to Muscovite civilization, Siberia. Chains and hardships, however, had not soured his nature, as the good-humored twinkle in his eye sufficiently proved.
He was the sword and buckler of Czernova, unceasingly vigilant in guarding this last fragment of Poland both against open aggression from without, and also against secret disaffection from within.
The Muscovites of the principality who regarded him as an incarnation of the devil had some shadow of reason on their side; for though Zabern was naturally of a frank and open disposition, the web of political circumstances had forced him to be crafty and subtle.