"Strange as it must appear, there was nothing that irritated them more than this. They could not bear to be regarded in that light, and being too proud to come out of it themselves, what did they do but send their maids--they may not have meant it, but so it came to pass--to produce a flirtation among my men. Precautions had been taken (as we thought) against any process of that sort, by detailing for this custody only grizzled veterans, who had wives at home, and could not understand a single word of Russian. But this, though a step in the right direction, did not go quite far enough; and several of our villagers beyond the prime of life behaved in a manner more appropriate to their sons. So that I found myself compelled, in the proper discharge of my office, to use increasing diligence from day to day. For one of the Russian ladies, being the mother of two little girls, had obtained permission to bring her favourite French governess, as lively a girl as ever lived, and acquainted with half-a-dozen languages. This Mademoiselle de J----,--for I will show her the same consideration as her wealthier comrades,--was perpetually forming little plots of the wildest and most romantic kind, for the escape of all the captive band. With a view to that, she took upon herself to inspect me closely, every time I came to a little gate, newly put across the pass, by my special orders, which had created much offence inside. There was no other way, by which these ladies, who now placed every confidence in me, could manage to get away at all, without perpendicular motion; unless it were the narrow winding passage leading into a sombre wood, and there I had 'Wolves!' painted up in great Russian capitals, so that few feminine eyes had the courage even to look at the signboard. And this is how it should be with them. For we do not wish them to be like us. "I was trying to get out of that condition of the mind, into which I had been cast by a very few words, and still fewer glances from that lovely Princess Oria, whom I remembered as a very little maiden leading some procession, when I was a lad at Tiflis. If ever any boy has any heart to lose, when it ought to be gone upon play and mischief, mine had taken a sally out of me at sight of that young darling, trying to walk in a stately manner as she had been instructed, and resolute to bring her soft innocent self to the stiffness of the great occasion. How I had longed to lift her up among them and shout--'This is your Queen, if you had a spark of courage. Behold the pink eagle on her shoulder!' "But now it was a very different thing. The duty of an officer in trust was laid upon me, and if the men of Georgia would not stand up for their race, what had any outer tribe to do with it? The main point before me was to conquer foolish yearnings, and behave as a figure made of steel and leather. And without the interference of that glittering little governess, the rapture and the anguish of my life would not have been.