"Now the saints confound these Long-beards!" murmured Katina, compelled to exercise great care in steering her course. "Is it Butter-week, that they throng so? Our short route is proving a long one."
Owing partly to the crowded state of the street, and partly to the condition of the wooden pavement, which a recent shower had rendered somewhat slippery, it was impossible for the vehicle to proceed other than at a walking pace, and thus the trio could not fail to overhear the remarks made by some of the throng.
"I saw the duke brought in through the St. Florian Gate," cried a woman, addressing a circle of bystanders.
"They knew better than to bring him in through the Troitzka Gate," observed a man beside her, apparently her husband. His face was disfigured by a long smear of dried blood.
"He was riding with downcast eyes in the centre of a troop," continued the woman. "And when my goodman cried, 'Long live our prince,' one of the troopers struck him across the face with the flat of his sabre, bidding him begone for a traitor. Look at the mark of the sword," she screamed.
"Yes," chimed in her husband, "and the princess herself passed by a minute later in her droshky, and drove off to the Palace, not looking one whit troubled by the thought of the duke's imprisonment."
"Troubled, do you say?" cried his wife. "I never saw her looking more glad than she did to-night. And to think that a mere girl should have the power to arrest a big handsome man like our Duke John! We want a full-grown, bearded soldier to rule over us, and not a silly maid."
"Especially a maiden under the thumb of Cardinal Ravenna," interjected a bystander. "We all know why she has imprisoned the duke; because he is a Greek, and loves the Muscovites and the great White Czar."
"And the princess hates the Czar," cried the woman.
"The shoes she wears in her palace are stamped on the sole with the portrait of our little father Nicholas, so that she may tread his image under foot whenever she walks."