“Let the matter pass, Maître le Bastien,” I said lightly. “He has erred, and he is like enough to atone for it here. I forgive him—I pray you, follow my example.”
I did not add that I would never trust the varlet more; it would have seemed a poor revenge on an inferior.
A cloud passed from Maître le Bastien’s face; he was a man of an exceeding kind heart, and loved to give or take offence less than any man I ever saw.
“He must win my confidence again,” he said, relenting; “which will be no easy matter.”
A deep flush passed over the apprentice’s face.
“I will win it, monsieur,” he said.
Willing to let the matter pass, I walked to the window and looked out, trying to locate our position in the palace. The room, which was square and marble-floored, had three narrow windows in it, which were not barred, but, as I found, too high from the ground for the most daring to leap from them. I saw that we were in the front of the palace and our windows all overlooked the Red Place and the Red Staircase. There were wide sills, wide enough for a man to stand upon, both inside and out, and beside the third window on the right, a fretwork of iron ran upward to the roof. I looked at it sharply, to see if it would afford a possibility of escape, but it seemed too slender to uphold a man, and besides it ran up, not down, and the chances of escape by the roof were too remote to tempt anyone to take the risk.
Evening was approaching, and below the court of the Kremlin lay in the shadow; a purple dimness wrapped the distant places, and swathed itself, cloud-like, about the foundations of cathedrals and palaces, creeping upward, as a vapour creeps, while above the white domes and minarets caught the afterglow, and the golden crosses gleamed against the deep, clear sky.
I stood leaning on the window-sill, looking down and reflecting on the strangeness of our position, and deeply troubled, too, over the peril that I knew threatened the Princess Daria, and that I was powerless to avert. I could not even warn her. If I could only find Maluta and speed him on an errand to her, I thought, but the dwarf had disappeared when I entered the presence of Sophia; and I had no means of communicating with him. Knowing that accidents of a sudden and mysterious nature often happened in Moscow, that even the young women chosen as brides by the various czars had been summarily disposed of by jealous factions at court, I had no reason to feel comforted in regard to the princess. That Sophia was jealous of her I could not doubt, and it was not difficult to conjecture the result, and I was helpless! It was this that drove me well-nigh to distraction and made me give tart answers to Maître le Bastien when he began to talk of our situation. Naturally enough the worthy man thought more of his own peril and inconvenience than of anything else, and I had no mind to betray the cause of my uneasiness, so we talked often at cross-purposes, and with little sympathy.
“This is a most unhappy matter,” he said gravely, “and may end in a worse way still.”