CHAPTER VII.
THE ENVOY’S CLOAK.
To Zénaïde I gave a full description of the scene at Mentchikofs palace, and she soon discovered the key to the matter. The episode was much discussed, and she found that Yury Apraxin was an adopted son of Madame Zotof’s brother, and called by courtesy a nephew of the Councillor Zotof. No blood relationship existed; madame’s brother, having no children, had adopted the son of a friend, but young Apraxin held the place of a nephew in the Zotof household. Here, then, was a complication. Not only was the czar offended at one of mademoiselle’s connections, but how would Zotof endure the insult offered to his family? Beyond all this there was another tangle in the skein; Zénaïde was informed that young Apraxin had been absent in Lithuania and was a lover of Mademoiselle Zotof, that her hand had been promised to him,—one of those marriage contracts common in Russia, as in France, when a boy and girl were betrothed in infancy by their parents. At an inopportune time the fiancé had returned to claim his bride, but had been quickly repudiated by Zotof, and in a few days he discovered the cause of his discomfiture. Consequent jealousy of the czar led him to make the offensive speech which had caused Peter’s outburst. Apraxin had been only a week in Moscow, and probably knew nothing, as yet, of M. de Lambert; but I fancied that as soon as he learned the truth, his jealousy of the Frenchman would be more bitter than that which had animated his attack upon the czar. So it was a wheel within a wheel, and it required my wife’s wit to trace it all out.
Meanwhile the czar was apparently wavering between the two fair women, although showing more favor to Catherine since the offence from one of mademoiselle’s family. It was whispered, too, that M. Zotof had found it difficult to accept the affair at Mentchikof’s with toleration. The open insult to his protégé was scarcely repaired by the czar’s forgiveness of the youth’s offence; however, the councillor was, in the end, too wise to quarrel with a sovereign who might smite his adopted nephew with one hand, and raise his niece to a throne with the other. Moreover, madame would not allow him to resent the affront while she had visions of her niece upon the throne of Russia, and it ended in Apraxin being left to nurse his hatred of the czar in secret.
In the midst of these intrigues there was a little ripple of excitement at court over the arrival of a secret envoy from Augustus of Saxony, King of Poland. The envoy had important despatches, and came with great secrecy and precaution, but in two hours his errand was known all over Moscow, so difficult is it to keep court secrets. It was a matter of particular interest to me, as it was my mission to watch the Swedish-Saxon imbroglio. M. de Lambert and I were especially active, and this very Polish envoy was, in a singular way, the cause of an incident that proved more or less important to M. Guillaume. We had both gone to the Kremlin at a late hour in the afternoon, and I had an interview with the czar, while my companion was engaged with the chief of the Department of Foreign Affairs. As we were leaving the palace, the Polish envoy arrived; he left the ante-room as we entered it and, taking up our cloaks, went out into the early Russian twilight. It was a threatening evening and rapidly growing dark. A few drops of rain fell on our faces as we crossed the square, and M. de Lambert looked up at the lowering sky.
“More ice and snow,” he said; “how thankful the Russian must be to see the spring! A man is fortunate to be born in a milder climate.”
I laughed softly. “In my young days, monsieur,” I said, “I remember thinking that the sun shone only in Moscow, and I thought it was even so with you.”
“My sun is for the time obscured by a cloud, M. le Vicomte,” he responded readily.
We had passed out of the Gate of the Redeemer, and were walking slowly towards our quarters. We were unattended, having left both Pierrot and Touchet in Zénaïde’s service, and after a little we fell to talking of the czar and the Polish envoy, and our voices were lowered. A few yards from our quarters, there was a long lane flanked on either side by the blank walls of vacant courtyards. When we reached it, it was quite dark and the rain was falling fast. We were near the end of the lane, when there was a rush behind us and a man flung himself upon my companion. M. de Lambert’s foot slipped, and for the moment he had difficulty in recovering himself under the sudden assault, yet he had grasped and thrown his assailant before I could interpose. The man lay still on his back in the mud, stunned by the heavy fall. We both bent over him curiously, I fully expecting to see Tikhon. He stirred and made an effort to rise, which caused M. de Lambert to lay a heavy hand on his collar, while I removed the pistol from his belt; in doing so, I discovered that it was not Dolgoruky’s equerry, but a younger and smaller man. We ordered him to rise, and he obeyed sullenly, and then stood motionless, an inconvenient prisoner.
“What shall we do with him?” M. de Lambert asked of me in French.
“Take him to our quarters and there probe the matter,” I said at once.