"But, in the name of all that's wonderful, what brought you out of St. Petersburg in such weather?"
"H'm! My dear fellow, that your own experience can give you a good inkling of! Your windows do not look on to Nevski Prospect either! You, too, have your reasons for being here."
"Right you are," said Pushkin, blowing the smoke in blue rings into the air, which rings gathered together over Bethsaba's head, as an aureole over the head of a saint; and, ostentatiously drawing his wife towards him, he put his arm round her waist as he said, "This is my reason!"
Galban laughed. "Well, I certainly cannot lay claim to such a reason! As far as I am concerned, it is Veteres migrate coloni" (Old cottagers take to wandering). "The world is topsy-turvy. The old set have to fly for their lives. Even Araktseieff is smoking his pipe at Grusino."
"That surprises me. Czar Constantine was his ideal. And I know that there is no one Araktseieff loves better than Czar Constantine."
"Yes; if Constantine were the Czar, I, too, should have known what I was about; but he is not."
"Not Czar?" said Pushkin, amazed. "But the papers give his name in all proclamations."
"But, my dear Alexander Sergievitch! You a writer yourself, and yet are naïve enough to believe what is in the papers?"
"The devil! But one must believe them when they announce that the Senate has proclaimed Constantine to be Czar, and that the household troops have sworn the oath of allegiance to him."
"All the same, Constantine is not Czar. We live, my friend, in an age of miracles and absurdities. Official papers do not publish everything; still, in St. Petersburg people pretty well know what is happening. When Constantine was proclaimed Czar, and from Grand Dukes to guards all had duly sworn the oath of allegiance to him, the President of the Senate, Lapukhin, produces a sealed packet, upon which was inscribed, in the late Czar's handwriting—'To be opened in cabinet council after my death.' The seals were broken, and within was found a document in which Grand Duke Constantine, the Czarevitch, renounced his succession to the throne in favor of his younger brother, Grand Duke Nicholas. A second document contained in the packet was Alexander's will, wherein he states that he had accepted Constantine's renunciation of the throne, and naming Grand Duke Nicholas as his heir."