“By all the saints, madame!” I exclaimed, “I cannot be his guardian. He has been here scarcely more than a quarter of an hour, and has not removed the dust of his long ride; how could I foresee his immediate departure?”
Madame de Brousson sighed. “I feel as if we were responsible for him,” she remarked pensively, “and you and I both know the methods here more thoroughly than he.”
“I am half thankful for his passports,” I grumbled, “since Russia is no place for a young courtier.”
As I spoke, I looked up and caught my wife’s eyes fixed upon me with an arch glance of amusement. She laughed softly.
“If you had possessed your mature wisdom twenty years ago, M. le Vicomte,” she said gravely, “we should never have met.”
I had risen from my chair and I made her an obeisance.
“I am convicted, madame,” I replied with mock gravity, “and crave your permission to withdraw.”
Touchet came, at the moment, with my mantle and sword, and, taking him for an attendant, I went to Mentchikof’s house. As I approached it, I noted with amusement the certain indications of the humor of a court. A week before, he had been the czar’s favorite, the patron of a beautiful woman who was likely to be the successor of Anna Mons, and the courtyard and hall had been crowded with courtiers and those miserable creatures who fawn upon the man of the hour. But for a few days the sunshine of imperial favor had been obscured, and lo, the gay host of butterflies had fluttered to some brighter spot. The entrance was deserted, and a solitary usher conducted me through the splendid salons to the small room in the wing where the great man worked alone. I had not seen Mentchikof since the day that we parted on his stairs, with his veiled threat against mademoiselle in my ears, and I approached him now with some feelings of curiosity. How would the pampered favorite endure this season of neglect? how would the darling of a court face the solitude of a discarded counsellor? Without any ceremony, the usher threw open the door and I stood face to face with Alexander Mentchikof. He sat in a large chair by his writing-table, in an easy attitude; his left elbow resting on the arm of his chair, his right arm thrown across the table; the pen, still wet with ink, in his fingers, while his left hand supported his chin, for his head was bent in thought and his fine face was unusually grave in its repose. His rich dress of black velvet was arranged as carefully as if for some court function, and the blue ribbon of the Order of Saint Andrew showed on his breast. He greeted me without emotion and with his usual urbanity, asking me to be seated.
“There are chairs in plenty to-day, M. le Maréchal,” he remarked, smiling, as he glanced at the vacant room; “you find my state reduced, and my friends”—he laughed, looking at me with those keen brilliant eyes, “my friends are running for a safer covert. It reminds me of an ancient legend,—of a great lion to whom all the beasts, through fear, paid court. The lion had a favorite, a mouse, whom he guarded tenderly, and all the other beasts paid homage to it, telling it that it resembled its patron, until the mouse, through conceit, offended, and the lion deserted it in anger. Immediately all the beasts departed, save one, who swallowed the wretched little mouse. Presently, the lion, returning, found his pet gone, and was enraged, and fell upon the beast who had eaten it, and tore him and drove off the others, and was afterwards a scourge because no animal dared any more to try to soothe his mood.” Throwing out his hands with a gesture of disdain, he added, “I am waiting to be devoured.”
“It is easy to draw a parallel,” I said thoughtfully, “for afterwards no man will rule the heart of this lion.”