“So, master goldsmith, you’ve come at last,” she said in Russ, her tone as acid as vinegar. “I find that you have not been idle in Moscow.”
Le Bastien, as cautious as an old fox, felt his ground.
“I have endeavoured to labour diligently, your highness,” he said suavely, “and I think I may venture to say that I have accomplished something. The great vase is now nearly completed, if your highness will but come to view it, and here is a model I have been making of a figure of our Lady of Kazan, to be executed in gold and jewels.”
As he spoke he signed to me to advance, and display the model, which I did with the more alacrity because I wanted a nearer view of the princess, but I was so awkward in handling the image that the goldsmith took it himself and displayed it. But Sophia looked at it with a cold eye; it was plain that her thoughts were elsewhere.
“In gold with jewels; it would cost too much,” she said severely, “and we have not paid our soldiers. I know not why the Czarina Natalia should encourage such extravagance.”
Maître le Bastien, accustomed to consideration from all the great men of France, and the patronage of our munificent monarch, flushed hotly at her tone and handed the image back to me.
“The conception was altogether mine, madame,” he said, in dignified displeasure. “In my country princes delight in all the elegancies of art; pardon me for not considering merely the question of cost.”
He meant a rebuke, but it was lost on her highness; she merely shrugged her shoulders. She had no conception probably of the greatness of France, seeing nothing beyond her own horizon but the edge of the world; the pride of these Muscovites is something truly amazing.
The display of the model coming off so poorly, the goldsmith stood silent and, for the moment, the interview seemed a flat enough matter, and then the czarevna suddenly struck to the root of it. She held out her hand, and in the palm of it lay the Princess Daria’s jewelled pear. We both started, and Maître le Bastien turned from white to green; the good man seemed for the time chicken-hearted.
“You have recently handled the locket, master goldsmith,” Sophia said slowly, “and for whom?”