She turned on me sharply. “You know where it is, then?” she said. “Ah, I perceive, it was you who had the pear and hid it from the Boyar Kurakin.”
Saint Denis! it was M. Kurakin then! Like a flash I saw how we had been betrayed; but how had she got the trinket? There was the riddle.
“The pear was brought for us to mend, madame,” I said simply.
She scowled at me, black as a thunder-cloud; she was far too keen not to suspect us, but she had no means of pinning us to the wall.
“I am determined to know how this miniature was substituted for mine,” she said in a more even tone, though her small eyes glittered like two knife points; “if either of you trifle with me or deceive me, you shall receive first the pravezh and then——” She drew her hand across her throat with a significant gesture.
Then, for the first time, Maître le Bastien fully recovered his composure. Her speech had made my blood boil, and it brought his to his cheek.
“Serene highness,” he said proudly, “you forget that we are both Frenchmen, and subjects of the greatest monarch upon earth, his most Christian Majesty, Louis, King of France, and we are here under the safe conduct of the Russian government.”
She shot a look at him that defied all law and all authority but her own; it was the look of the royal tigress at bay.
“We are in Moscow, master goldsmith,” she said tartly, “the King of France rules not here.”
“His arm is long, madame,” retorted Le Bastien coldly.