"Silence! Question no further! When we have retired to bed, when we are quite alone, and there is no ear to overhear us, I will tell you all, and will teach you what you have to do. And now put your hair in curl-papers. The day after to-morrow we have to attend the grand farewell ball at Peterhof. There you may tremble; there show what a weak, innocent, timid little wife is capable of when her husband's life is at stake!"
"If that be so I will not be afraid; I will be bold and sly as a cat! I have not the courage of myself to pin a butterfly, but the man who threatens my Alexander I could pierce to the heart. Mashallah! I am the daughter of my mother!"
Zeneida then instructed Bethsaba in a part which she played to perfection to the end. At present, however, we may not divulge the plot of the play.
The link had been successfully forged into the chain. At the brilliant farewell ball given by the Czar to his royal guests at Peterhof, the Russian Versailles, Bethsaba had the honor conferred on her of being presented to the Czarina. The Czar had long known her as Sophie's playfellow. It was he who led the Georgian princess to tell the Czarina of the land of her birth. Bethsaba, the little Scheherezade, half closing her eyes that she might not see those around her, began to tell of the land where winter is unknown. Who could fail to be eloquent when speaking of his native land? Of sky clear as crystal, of air aromatic with balsamic fragrance, of woods where the leaves of the trees neither wither nor fall, of rivers which never freeze, of fields always gay with flowers, of the mighty ice-covered mountains which shut in the laughing valleys; and where vital power and buoyancy are diffused in grass, trees, water, and air, and the dwellers in that sunny clime know neither sickness nor decay?
That to which all the most learned doctors in the world had been powerless to persuade the Czarina—the change to another climate—was brought about by the enchanted chatter of simple, childlike lips.
Taking her husband's hand, the Czarina uttered:
"I should like to see that sunny land."
Those words, "I should like," are often more powerful than any mere word of command.
Courtiers and conspirators, who at this dazzling entertainment had grouped themselves about the superb fountains of the Sampson Springs, had not the slightest conception that in the course of a short ten minutes one delicate woman, with her rosy, childlike lips would effect such a complete revolution—that one peal of silvery laughter would blow to the winds their cannon, their army, their plan of campaign. The fairy tale of the Circassian king's daughter had this pre-eminence over all other fairy wonders, that it extinguished the impending outbreak of a volcano by a drop of water.
This drop of water had shone in the Czarina's eyes when she said: