“I understand,” she said. “’Tis so here also. We are from different provinces; from the north and the south, from Great and Little and White Russia, from Kief, and Novgorod, and Kazan, and Lithuania, but,” she added softly, “we all love the White Mother Moscow. Is it so with Paris?”
I shook my head, smiling a little. Our brethren south of the Loire had not loved Paris much since Saint Bartholomew, and there were others. I remembered that I had thought it an evil star which took me to Paris, but now I began to think differently.
“Paris is a very great city, mademoiselle,” I said, “and emulation and jealousy and strife are there—in secret places—just as turbulence and strife are brooding here to-day in Moscow.”
She opened her eyes and looked at me in surprise.
“I do not understand you, monsieur,” she said.
“I mean the Streltsi, mademoiselle, and the jealousy between the Naryshkins and Miloslavskys. The soldiers seem ripe for rebellion.”
She shrugged her shoulders with a disdainful smile.
“They would not dare,” she said haughtily; “what are they? Nothing but moujiks, and the sons of moujiks; there is no aristocratic blood there to lead.”
“Sometimes the canaille can do much mischief, Princess,” I replied, “and what if these moujiks are secretly led by royalty itself?”
She glanced at me quickly, a little startled, but she had an aristocrat’s contempt for the mob.