Part 2

At this both laughed a little, but I saw that mademoiselle the imperious was growing impatient, and, in desperation, I turned the locket over and over, and as I did so my eye caught sight of the Russian Imperial arms on the small end of the pear, where a golden clasp represented the stem. In twisting the trinket thus in my fingers I must have pressed a spring, for lo! the pear fell apart and mademoiselle clapped her hands.

“The problem is solved,” she cried, while both of them craned their necks to look at the two pieces.

These already riveted my attention; in one side was a lock of hair and in the other a miniature that no one in Moscow could mistake, flattered though it was. It was the face of the dead Czar’s sister, her serene highness Sophia Alexeievna. There was an exclamation, either of surprise or pleasure, from one of the girls, and as I cast a covert glance at them I discovered that both hoods had been slightly displaced, and I saw the features of the taller of the two. Saint Denis, what a face! Young, beautiful, with the spirit of an empress; the dark eyes, keen and brilliant, the lips and cheeks deeply coloured, the brows sharply defined, the forehead like milk. My glance was so searching and so earnest that mademoiselle looked up and, encountering it, flashed me a look of such hauteur as I had never before seen in the eyes of woman, but she disdained to draw her hood. Meanwhile, the smaller and merrier beauty had given away to delight at the adventure.

“Take out the portrait, monsieur,” she said; “I have one here to put in its stead.”

“Nay,” interposed Mlle. Daria. “I will have none of it, Lissa; the jest has gone too far.”

“Daria, Daria!” cried the other, forgetful of me, “thou art afraid! thou, Daria Kirilovna!”

“I am not!” cried mademoiselle with defiance, tossing her head; “but I despise the trick.”

“Oh, sweetheart, thou----” Lissa broke off under a lightning glance from the dark eyes, for Mlle. Daria had remembered me.

But the merry damsel was not to be silenced; plucking at her companion’s cloak, she drew her off into the corner and whispered, and laughed, and entreated, apparently between jest and earnest, while I pretended to examine the miniature, all the while cudgelling my brains for a solution of this escapade, so rare was it for girls to be out on an adventure in Moscow, and girls too, of rank, for no one could doubt that who looked at them and heard them speak. Meanwhile Daria had been melting under the persuasion of the fair manœuvrer, and she came back slowly across the room, permitting rather than encouraging Lissa, who now took the lead.

“Prithee, monsieur,” she said,--she too, spoke French, though with a strong accent,--“take out that portrait for us and substitute this.” As she held out her hand her companion made a sudden motion as if to snatch the bit of ivory from it, but restrained herself and let Lissa hand me a miniature.

Then I understood mademoiselle’s hesitation, for the face limned on the ivory, more or less faithfully, was her own. Suppressing my surprise, I put it down on a table and began the delicate task of lifting the other miniature from its setting, and a task it was for my awkward fingers. With no knowledge of such baubles, and as little dexterity as a bear, I fully expected to break the picture in pieces, but, as luck would have it, either the ivory was already loose in its setting, or I again hit upon some secret spring, and out fell Sophia, just escaping annihilation by falling on Maître le Bastien’s taffety cloak that lay on the table. But now was the rub, for I had no notion of how I should set mademoiselle’s face in the room where Sophia’s had been, and both girls hung on my movements with breathless interest. I took up the bit of ivory with a gingerly touch and cautiously dropped it into the gaping setting, and lo! success beyond my wildest hopes. It seemed to sink into place, as if by magic, and Mlle. Lissa clapped her hands with delight.

“Good goldsmith!” she cried, beaming upon me. “What a fair exchange!”

“Hush, Vassalissa!” commanded Mlle. Daria; “for shame!”

But Lissa would not be suppressed.

“And is it not?” she cried mischievously. “Ah, bah; what a fright!” and she pointed derisively at Sophia’s portrait. “Come, come, Daria, let us have our frolic while we may!”

“Exactly so, while we may!” retorted Daria grimly; “but afterwards, my dear,” and she smiled a little.

“The deluge,” replied Vassalissa, laughing. “Ah, good master goldsmith, give us the trinket that we may get into the ark.”

But here was the difficulty; I could not fasten the miniature in place, nor could I for the life of me close the locket. The pear was twain and like to be so, as far as I could see, to the end of the world, and Mlle. Daria began to cast suspicious glances at me. I think, for the second time, she doubted that I was a goldsmith.

“Time presses, monsieur,” she said imperiously; “let us have it, as speedily as may be.”

I was red in the face and almost out of temper, but I saw no escape.

“Mademoiselle must leave it with me,” I replied as blandly as I could; “it will take time to secure the portrait and reclasp the locket.”

“Impossible!” said Daria; “we must have it now, monsieur; the matter is imperative.”

I saw that she was uneasy, and I thought that Vassalissa was a little alarmed; both girls pressed forward eagerly.

“We must have it!” they protested.

I took the bull by the horns. “Certainly, mademoiselle,” I said with a bow, “but it will not be completed or fastened,” and I held out the two pieces of that ill-starred pear with a malicious smile.

They looked at each other and at me for a moment with blank faces, and then they broke out with irresistible, delicious, rippling laughter.

“What on earth shall we do?” cried Vassalissa; “the deluge and no ark! Monsieur, we have a fable that when the Evil One, in the form of a mouse, gnawed a hole in the ark, Uzh, the snake, saved the ship by thrusting his head into the place. Find us a snake therefore, good goldsmith, or our ark will surely sink. Mend us the pear, or----”

“Pshaw!” interrupted Mlle. Daria, with an imperious gesture, “what difference? I care not a straw! Finish it, monsieur, and send it to me at your leisure.”

“Daria!” sharply ejaculated her smaller companion, suddenly grown cautious.

And Daria bit her lip and turned crimson.

“Mademoiselle may trust me,” I said, drawing myself up to my full height, which compelled them both to look up at me.

She gave me a swift, penetrating glance, and her face, by nature haughty, suddenly relaxed and a smile, like sunshine, shone on it.

“I do, monsieur,” she said, with her queenly air. “You will send the locket, by a safe hand, to the house of the Prince Voronin, to be delivered only to me--the Princess Daria.”

Her companion fairly gasped, her blue eyes big with amazement, at mademoiselle’s daring.

“I will bring it with my own hand,” I said, with a profound bow.

And, as I spoke, there was a sharp knock at the door. Vassalissa started with a little shriek of nervous excitement, but Daria laughed.

“’Tis old Piotr,” she said.

As she spoke, the door opened and a tall, grey-haired Russian, wearing the dress of a boyar’s retainer, stood on the threshold.

“We have been here too long, little mistress,” he said in Russ, respectful, but impatient; “’tis neither safe nor wise.”

“Bear with us, Piotr,” said his mistress graciously; “’tis but a half hour under a whole moon; may not the children play?”

He shook his head, glancing with evident affection at the tall, girlish figure.

“Time waits for no man, Daria Kirilovna,” he said gravely, “and the morning is wiser than the evening.”[A]

“I come, I come!” she retorted, and with a gesture of farewell to me, she left the room, followed by Lissa, who cast a mischievous smile at me, and a doubtful glance at the trinket in my hands as she went out.

_III: THE BOYAR KURAKIN_

LEFT alone with the trinket, I forgot it in my meditation on the two girls, or rather, if the truth be told, on the one--the Princess Daria. Such beauty, such spirit, such dignity; the combination was rare, and in a Russian, brought up no doubt under the iron rule of some old Russian dragon of propriety, it was little short of a miracle. How came this perfect flower to bloom in a waste of snow? And how came she and the merry one on this strange expedition? There was some mischief afoot, but I could not fathom it, cudgel my brains as I would. They both seemed too young and too artless to be engaged in any very profound intrigue, and yet the portrait of the czarevna was an unusual possession to cast lightly and publicly aside; publicly, I say, because I was a stranger to them and might be, for all they knew, quite unworthy of trust. And how did they escape the vigilant watchfulness of a Russian household, where the women were kept in almost Oriental seclusion? It was true that the Czar Alexis the Débonair had modified the customs of the court in this respect, by the freedom he had allowed his young wife, Natalia Naryshkin, the mother of the newly elected Czar Peter. Yet it was undoubtedly an escapade for two Russian girls to visit the workshop of a stranger and a Frenchman, for the nation had no love for the French, and indeed a deep distrust of all foreigners.

But what of it, after all? I reflected, was it not better to remember the two pretty faces, the slender hands, the soft voices, the ripple of merry laughter? Saint Denis! ’twas worth something to have seen them! And I would see them again unless Jéhan de Cernay had assumed a coat of quite another colour from the one he had worn in France. As for Daria, she might well be a princess; she looked it, and no queen was ever more worthy a crown.

How she had graced even Maître le Bastien’s workshop, and transformed the old room into an enchanted palace! I looked about it now with a shrug; since she had left it, it had returned to its usual aspect, and was a workshop again and no more.

The house that Prince Galitsyn had given to Maître le Bastien stood in the Kitai-gorod, with the bazaars on one side, humming with life, like so many beehives, and on the other the palaces of the boyars, the official nobility of Moscow; and yonder were the golden domes and minarets of the Kremlin. The house itself was much like the others in Moscow--built of logs, the interstices stuffed with tow, and the roof also of wood; it was no marvel that there had been great fires, leaping from town to town, within the walls, and carrying terror and destruction with smoke and flame. Underground we had cellars for storing liquors and ice; and above these, on the ground floor, were the kitchen, refectory, and offices, while on the second floor were always the living rooms; the Chamber of the Cross, or private chapel, being in the centre, and a narrow stair led to the apartments above, usually set aside for the women, in a separate story of the house, and called the _terem_.

It was on the second floor that Maître le Bastien had his workshop, in a long room that had served as a nursery and playroom for the children of the Russian family who had previously occupied the dwelling. The windows faced north, and the room was well lighted and spacious, but very different from the goldsmith’s famous workshop on the Pont-au-Change, where all the lovers of his art in Paris flocked. I have seen Louvois there, and Luxemburg himself, with his hump and his pale face, and Monseigneur, dull and pompous, and the little Duchess of Burgundy with Mme. de Maintenon, then called the widow of Scarron, and the court ladies, Mme. de Mazarin and Mme. de Richelieu, and hundreds of others, and sometimes the great king himself. It was Le Bastien who made the famous bracelet for Mme. de Montespan, and Le Bastien who designed the great candelabra for the king’s table. It was the silver vase that he had made for Louis that he was to copy now for Prince Galitsyn to give, so it was whispered, to the Czarevna Sophia, she whose portrait lay on the folds of the old taffety cloak. The goldsmith had received other orders in Moscow, and had been making some models, too, that he purposed carrying back to France, so the workshop was not without its objects of interest, though bare enough compared with the marvels of that room on the Pont-au-Change.

Here in one corner was a candelabrum that was nearly finished for the Czar Feodor, when his majesty died so suddenly. It was a graceful piece, a full cubit in height, the figure of Hecate bearing a torch; it was to have been in solid silver, ornamented with gold. Near it was a bracelet of Russian amethysts, set in a design of clusters of grapes, the leaves of gold, studded with emeralds--so closely that they sparkled with green. Beyond was a salt-cellar, undertaken also for Prince Galitsyn, a shell upheld by two mermaids--in gold; but the most conspicuous object was the great vase, three cubits in height, of silver, with bas-reliefs of gold; on one side Venus and Mars, on the other Pluto and Persephone, and below a group of sirens formed the pedestal, their uplifted arms holding the vase, while around the top of it--which opened like the petals of a flower--was a marvellously fine design of Cupids at play. Though it was before my eyes all day, I often examined it and watched the work grow under the master’s skilful fingers, and I doubt not I should have been staring at it when Maître le Bastien returned, if it had not been for the fascination of that jewelled pear that I could not put out of my mind. And I was back at the table again, with the thing in my fingers, when the goldsmith entered the room.

Le Bastien was a man past middle age, with a noble head and fine face, which wore habitually an expression of calm reflection worthy a great philosopher. The man was indeed an artist and a sculptor of no mean order, who yet carried on his trade of goldsmith, and was reported rich in Paris. His dress became his reputation, being rich though simple in style, of dark velvet with rare lace at his throat and wrists, and a chain of gold about his neck, a marvel of his own workmanship, and I noticed that he wore on it to-day the icon that Prince Galitsyn had given him. He entered with his usual dignified and composed demeanour, greeting me pleasantly.

“I fear you have had a dull day, M. le Marquis,” he said, with his accustomed formality, for in private he always gave me my title, though in public I was “Raoul,” the apprentice; I think it would have hurt the good man to infringe on a single rule of courtesy, even in the privacy of his own closet.

“Far from it, Maître le Bastien,” I replied with a smile; “I have been receiving your fair visitors, and hold here a hostage for their return,” and I held up the pear.

The goldsmith looked at me in some surprise, and taking the locket turned it over in his hand, examining it curiously.

“Whence came this, monsieur?” he inquired, with evident interest, “and what is this talk of fair visitors? We are not on the Pont-au-Change.”

I laughed, enjoying his sober perplexity.

“No,” I responded, “but not even on the Pont-au-Change did you ever have a fairer visitor, and a princess at that,” and I proceeded to relate my experience with a relish for the surprise that I knew I was giving him.

But all the while, he was examining the pear with the minute attention of an expert, and when I was done, he closed it with an ease that made me envy his skill in a trade that, if the truth be told, I held rather in contempt.

“_Ma foi!_” I exclaimed, “I would have been happy to have done that an hour ago; you know the trick of it by instinct.”

He shook his head, smiling. “I have seen it before,” he said quietly; “a good piece of workmanship, monsieur, and Italian in origin.”

It was now my turn to be surprised, and I knew he enjoyed turning the tables upon me.

“Perhaps you can give me its history,” I said drily.

“No, no, M. le Marquis,” he replied, laughing a little at my vexation. “I only know that I have seen it, and handled it in the palace of the Prince Galitsyn; he usually wears it around his neck.”

“Ah,” I exclaimed, “with the portrait of Sophia in it,” and I pointed to the miniature lying on the folds of Maître le Bastien’s cloak.

The good man snatched it up in some anxiety, examining the ivory closely for cracks or defacements.

“I suppose the Czar Feodor planned to marry his fat sister to the prince,” I remarked.

Le Bastien smiled. “It is considered beneath the imperial dignity to marry a daughter or a sister of a czar to a subject,” he said, “and, as foreign princes--with two exceptions--have not sought Russian wives, there are quite a number of single czarevnas.”

“Old maids must be thicker than ravens about the Kremlin,” I rejoined, still watching him as he examined Sophia’s picture.

“There are only twelve of them in the imperial family at present,” he replied, and laughed a little, as he put the miniature carefully away; “there are only twelve,” he continued, “and this one is more of a man than a woman; her appeal to the populace at the Czar Feodor’s funeral, the other day, has raised the very devil among the lower classes, and ’tis rumoured to-day that she has won over twenty-one regiments of the Streltsi to the Miloslavskys; only one is faithful to the little czar. Mischief is afoot, M. le Marquis; I hear the growl of the mob in the Zemlianui-gorod; I see trouble brewing even among the palace guards, and the Czarina Natalia is losing her nerve. The Naryshkins have snatched all the offices of state, and they are young and untried and unfit to meet the crisis.”

Le Bastien went to the window and looked out, the golden pear still closed in his hands.

“Hush!” he said; “what is that?”

We listened and heard, far off, shouting and beating of drums.

“The yelp of the _canaille_,” he said scornfully. “I hear that the Streltsi demand that some of their colonels shall be sent to Siberia, and others receive the _pravezh_. Trouble, monsieur, trouble of a bloody kind; I predict it, and I trust,” he added suddenly, looking at the trinket on his palm, “that this bauble has nothing to do with it.”

“Nonsense!” I ejaculated, with a shrug; “the frolic of two girls, monsieur, nothing more.”

But he shook his head. “I know a little of the Prince Voronin,” he said; “he is on the side of the Naryshkins, and a man of much prominence, belonging to one of the oldest----”

He got no farther, for the door was opened without ceremony and a tall Russian stood on the threshold. The stranger’s dress, which was long and girded at the waist, was of deep crimson, brocaded in gold, and was edged with sable, to match the bands on the high round cap on his head. He was a young man and handsome, in a fierce way, as a tiger is handsome. His complexion had the tints of ivory and his eyes were brilliant and unpleasantly alert. Maître le Bastien knew him, and greeted him as a person of rank, while I suddenly endeavoured to remember my rôle of apprentice.

“I come unexpectedly, master goldsmith,” the stranger said, in Russ, “but I was curious to see your work.”

“The Boyar Kurakin is welcome always,” Maître le Bastien replied, with dignified courtesy, “and he may inspect my designs and my completed work at his leisure.”

So it was our neighbour, whom I had never happened to see, for he had been absent from Moscow until very recently. I regarded him therefore with some interest. He walked over to the large silver vase at once, and stood apparently contemplating it, while the goldsmith pointed out its beauties and explained the bas-reliefs, but I noticed that M. Kurakin’s sharp eyes had wandered from the vase to the golden pear that Le Bastien still held in his hand, and I began to regret my stupidity in allowing it to remain in sight.

“This design of the cupids,” said the master placidly, pointing to the top of the vase, “is precisely like the one on the vase I made for his majesty the King of France; but here,” and he indicated the bas-relief of Venus and Mars, “I have varied the pattern a little to the satisfaction of his excellency Prince Galitsyn.”

The Russian did not reply, he was too much engaged in staring at that fateful pear, so much so indeed, that the goldsmith suddenly became aware of it and let that hand fall at his side.

“Would you care to see my wax model of Diana, M. Kurakin?” he asked blandly.

“Surely,” replied the boyar, with interest that was either genuine or extremely well feigned; “your work pleases me so well that I think I must have a piece of it for my palace,” he added, suave as silk, showing his white teeth, that reminded me strangely of the fangs of a wolf, handsome as he was.

“Raoul, is not the Diana in the other room?” asked Maître le Bastien, suddenly turning to me, and, as he did so, he swiftly and silently slipped the pear into my hand with a significant glance.

“It is, monsieur,” I said, with the air of an apprentice, infinitely relieved at his adroit manœuvre, and thinking, fool that I was, that those keen eyes had not seen the locket change hands.

The master went on calmly discoursing about the vase, and I slipped out of the room and ordered Michaud to take in the model of Diana, a graceful figure, in wax, worthy of Le Bastien’s genius.