Potemkin, trembling with impatience, stood watching Count Cobenzl, as with his mincing gait he tripped out of the room, and turned again at the door to make his last bow. Scarcely had the portiere fallen when he sprang across the room, and darted toward his sleeping-chamber. Near his bed stood an escritoire. He flung it open and taking thence a casket filled with gold chains, diamonds, and other jewels, he turned out the contents with such violence that they flew over the room in every direction. He found what he sought; it was a little secret compartment. He pressed the spring and it opened, revealing nothing but a key! But Potemkin snatched it up, and, unheeding the treasures worth a million, that lay scattered about the room, he passed into a little dark anteroom, thence into a corridor, up and down staircases, forward, forward, rapidly forward!
Finally he reached the end of a long, narrow corridor. Nothing here was to be seen save a blank, white wall, which separated Potemkin's dwelling from the palace of the czarina. But in the corner of this wall was a scarcely perceptible recess. He pressed it with his finger, when the wall parted, revealing a door—the door which led to Catharine's own private apartments. Potemkin's key unlocked it, and he darted through the opening—on, on, until he reached another door, which also yielded to his key; and then, breathing freely, he looked around the cabinet of the czarina, and exclaimed, "I am saved!"
CHAPTER CXXXVI.
THE EMPRESS CATHARINE.
The magnificent state-apartments of the empress were silent and empty, for she had given out that she needed solitude to work, she would hold no levee to-day. But she was not alone; she was in a cabinet which led to her bedchamber; and with her was Count Orloff, her former lover and the murderer of her husband.
The empress lay half buried in the depths of a crimson velvet couch; and her large blue eyes were fixed with an expression of tenderness upon Orloff, who sat opposite to her. In spite of her fifty years, Catharine was a very handsome woman. Age had respected her fair, imperial brow, and the fingers of time had relented as they passed over it. Her eyes were as bright and beautiful as ever; her lips as red, and their smile as fascinating, as in the days of her youth; and in her bosom beat the passionate, craving, restless heart of a maiden of seventeen. This heart was as capable of love as of hate, and her graceful person as fitted to inspire love as it had ever been. Just now Catharine was anxious to please. She thought over the golden hours of her youthful passion, and tried to win a smile from Orloff's stern face. She forgot in him the man who had placed a bloody crown upon her head, she saw but the paramour who had wreathed her brow with the myrtles and roses of requited love.
They had spoken of indifferent things, but Catharine had grown silent, and the silence was becoming embarrassing to Orloff.
"Your majesty commanded my presence," began he.
Catharine raised her beautiful white arm from the cushion where it lay, and motioned him to approach.
"Hush, Orloff," said she, in a low voice. "No one hears us, do not call me majesty."