“Beware, madame!” cried Madame Zotof; “the eagle knows how to avenge both insult and injury.”
My wife’s face flushed with quick indignation. “Threats are wasted upon me, Madame Zotof,” she said haughtily; “I am not so poor a coward as to fear even an imperial eagle.”
“You will find that it has both beak and talons, madame,” the other woman replied.
“Have done with this, wife,” Zotof exclaimed suddenly. “What profit is it? In plain language, M. le Maréchal, his imperial Majesty has notified us that my niece is in your house, and commanded us to take her away. We must obey.”
“That may be, M. Zotof,” I replied haughtily; “but it does not signify that a marshal of France must obey you.”
He looked at me gravely, evidently embarrassed by the position in which he found himself, but stubbornly determined to obey the czar.
“It is true, M. le Vicomte,” he said, “that I cannot compel you to obey my master, yet we are in Moscow, and the King of France does not reign here. However, I ask you, as one man may ask another, in all courtesy, to deliver my niece into my hands.”
“And I reply in the same spirit, monsieur, that your niece is not in my house,” I said courteously.
He seemed for the moment perplexed; but Madame Zotof grasped the truth of the matter at once.
“She was here,” she exclaimed in her high voice. “Where have you sent her?”