The good man snatched it up in some anxiety, examining the ivory closely for cracks or defacements.
“I suppose the Czar Feodor planned to marry his fat sister to the prince,” I remarked.
Le Bastien smiled. “It is considered beneath the imperial dignity to marry a daughter or a sister of a czar to a subject,” he said, “and, as foreign princes—with two exceptions—have not sought Russian wives, there are quite a number of single czarevnas.”
“Old maids must be thicker than ravens about the Kremlin,” I rejoined, still watching him as he examined Sophia’s picture.
“There are only twelve of them in the imperial family at present,” he replied, and laughed a little, as he put the miniature carefully away; “there are only twelve,” he continued, “and this one is more of a man than a woman; her appeal to the populace at the Czar Feodor’s funeral, the other day, has raised the very devil among the lower classes, and ’tis rumoured to-day that she has won over twenty-one regiments of the Streltsi to the Miloslavskys; only one is faithful to the little czar. Mischief is afoot, M. le Marquis; I hear the growl of the mob in the Zemlianui-gorod; I see trouble brewing even among the palace guards, and the Czarina Natalia is losing her nerve. The Naryshkins have snatched all the offices of state, and they are young and untried and unfit to meet the crisis.”
Le Bastien went to the window and looked out, the golden pear still closed in his hands.
“Hush!” he said; “what is that?”
We listened and heard, far off, shouting and beating of drums.
“The yelp of the canaille,” he said scornfully. “I hear that the Streltsi demand that some of their colonels shall be sent to Siberia, and others receive the pravezh. Trouble, monsieur, trouble of a bloody kind; I predict it, and I trust,” he added suddenly, looking at the trinket on his palm, “that this bauble has nothing to do with it.”
“Nonsense!” I ejaculated, with a shrug; “the frolic of two girls, monsieur, nothing more.”