"Your husband, Princess Sonnenburg, is standing there. That is Prince Casimir Moskowski, your lawful consort."
The creature standing against the door was the exile just returned from Siberia; a creature broken down by oppression and suffering, with a mop of tangled hair and a long beard prematurely grey; his face livid and sunken, and prematurely aged by a network of wrinkles; bentbacked, with hands purple, frost-bitten, and horny from hard labour. Six years in the school of Siberia had reduced the stately son of the Starosta to this. Just look at him!
At the sight of this spectre, Heinrich quickly snatched a knife from the table, but his father still more quickly wrenched it from his grasp before Heinrich could draw it across his throat.
"Oho! my son! You don't get out of it so easily. You must make an exchange. The convict's coarse sheepskin awaits you. Your name is '13579.' You can easily remember it; it is a perfectly straightforward series of odd numbers. Your predecessor bore it for six years."
And the exchange really took place. Both the Austrian and the Russian Governments agreed that this scandalous fraud must be kept a profound secret, which would have ruined two of the most illustrious families of both empires. They also compelled the party most interested in the affair, the clever impostor, to make a late reparation. Moreover, Casimir had his property returned to him on condition that he acknowledged the Princess Ingola to be his consort. The Princess was also obliged to take him for her husband in order to procure for her children the family name, and the right of succession to the property. They all went together to Bialystok, and there they lived, as well as they could, joyless, cut off from the world, with their doors closed against every one.
But Heinrich they sent to the banks of the Jenisei. They shoved him into the sheepskin which had been made expressly for convict No. 13579, and gave him his predecessor's digging implements, sledge—and Samoyede consort.
And the old Starosta lived for a long time after that. He lived long enough to see the death of the children bearing the name of Moskowski, both Maximilian and Stanislaus; he lived long enough to see the family name of the Moskowskis become extinct. No other offspring came to supply their place.
But the veritable offspring of his flesh and blood, the little Samoyedes, increased and multiplied like sparrows. Their descendants now people the plains of the Jenisei, and very careful and industrious peasants they are.