I saw the amusement in her eyes and answered her in kind.
“You mock me, madame,” I said; “my gray hairs—”
“Are no safeguard,” interrupted my wife, laughing softly, “but a loyal heart—” and she made me a graceful curtsy.
I kissed her hand with gallantry. “Madame’s confidence shall not be betrayed,” I said in the same tone.
“We are a couple of fools, Philippe,” she exclaimed gayly.
“True enough, madame,” I responded calmly; “but now I thought it fortunate that our children were in France.”
“It is the old atmosphere, M. le Vicomte,” she rejoined; “we forgot the twenty-one years and the young officer in the king’s guards.”
The next day, following her advice, I went to visit Mentchikof in his own palace for the sole purpose of obtaining a view of Catherine Shavronsky.
Alexander Mentchikof was a man of immense wealth and great influence. He was one of the czar’s early companions, having as a boy enlisted in Peter’s play regiment at Preobrazhensky. In the years of the Regency, the Czarina Natalia and her two children, the little Czar Peter and the Princess Natalia, were obliged to live in retirement in a villa at the village of Preobrazhensky. There was spent Peter’s childhood and youth, and there he organized those military sports which were the delight of his boyhood, and formed that famous regiment which was to be the nucleus of the Russian army. The boys that were on its muster-rolls were his life-long friends, and became the men who shared his councils. It was near Preobrazhensky, at Ismailovo, that he discovered the ancient English boat belonging to Nikita Romanoff that was to suggest to his mind the future Russian navy. From such humble beginnings unroll the destinies of nations, because He who holds in the hollow of His hand the world, works out His will with a mysterious wisdom that beholds the usefulness of even a grain of wheat or a drop of dew.
Mentchikof was the object of much jealousy, for men saw the czar’s increasing affection for him and that he would probably succeed to the place of the dead Lefort, Peter’s Swiss favorite, and they both envied and feared him. His palace at Moscow showed every evidence of that extravagance which kept him embarrassed with debts and which sometimes threatened to end his career in disgrace. On the day on which I presented myself, he was entertaining a large party of his friends, and I was ushered into a salon that was Oriental in its magnificence. It was a common custom to have dinner at noon, and continue the feasting and gayety well into the night, and even until the next morning, the amount of liquor consumed making the last hours wildly riotous. Russian amusements were not always delicate; at one entertainment at which I had been present, the representative of Bacchus walked naked in the procession, crowned with a miter; the rout of Bacchanalians following with great bowls of wine, mead, beer, and brandy. I found it in my heart to pity the lean and long-limbed Bacchus, who must have felt the chill of the weather, even in his effort to please the czar; for Peter loved coarse and common amusements.