"What, marshal! haven't you heard?" cried Dorislas, his face expressing the extreme of amazement.
"Heard? I've heard nothing. I was occupied in searching for that assassin Russakoff till seven this morning, since when I have been asleep. What new folly, then, did you and the rest of the ministry perpetrate in my absence?"
"You know, of course, that the first order of the evening was the notification to the House of the princess's change of faith. Scarcely had Radzivil risen to make his statement, when he was interrupted by Lipski with a sneering remark to the effect that the premier might spare his words, for the Diet knew very well what he was going to say, and that it would have been more becoming on the part of the princess to have taken the House into her confidence earlier, and not to have waited till her hand had been forced by the article contained in his newspaper, the 'Kolokol.'"
"Damn his insolence! And of course the Muscovite crew howled applause? Was Ravenna in his place?"
"No; the cardinal, having been the chief instrument in the princess's conversion, shrank somewhat from facing the wrathful Muscovites last night. He preferred the opera-house."
"The coward! Would that I had been there!"
"What! at the opera? Yes, it was well worth visiting, because—"
"A truce to your fooling. What happened next?"
"After order had been restored—for, of course, Radzivil's statement provoked a devil of a row—Lipski rose and begged leave to bring in a new bill. Lamenting the increased taxation—and you know, marshal, my Budget is devilishly heavy this year—he introduced a measure for the appropriation of all plate, jewels, and money belonging to the conventual establishments throughout Czernova, such wealth to be devoted to the needs of the state."
"Ha!" cried Zabern. "This is nothing else but an attack upon the princess's faith. 'I have become a Catholic,' she avers. 'Then we will plunder your Church,' is, in effect, the Muscovite answer."