"I have brought the straw," he says, "and two assistants are without. The Empress can not wait; and we have not got your measure for the glass case yet." The banker looks the very picture of abject misery; but Britons, in foreign comedies, are always ready to buy every thing, and the banker had lived long enough in Russia to know the value of a bribe. He therefore offers one so considerable, that his grim visitor is touched, and endeavors to lull his sense of duty to sleep by a sophistry. "I was told, indeed, to have you stuffed," he reasons, "and got ready for the Empress; but nothing was said about time; so I don't mind giving you half an hour if you can satisfy these gentlemen"--and he turns to his associates. It is briefly done. The banker pays like a man whose life depends on his liberality--we suppose several millions--for the Executioner remarks that he can not forget that a groom in England frequently receives several thousands sterling a year; this is a very prevalent idea among the Frankish and Teutonic nations of the Continent. We once heard a Spanish general assert, in a large assembly, that the usual pay of an English ensign was five hundred pounds a month, an idea doubtless derived from some Iberian dramatist; and therefore a public functionary like the Executioner must be remunerated proportionably higher. The enormous pecuniary sacrifice gets for Sutherland some half-hour's respite; which he wisely uses by flying to the British embassador, Sir Bifstik, and awaits the result with great anguish. Sir Bifstik goes to the Empress. He is admitted. He asks if Her Majesty be aware of the position of a British subject named Sutherland? "Excellent man," says Her Majesty, "No! What is it?" Sir Bifstik bows low at the tones of the Imperial voice, and now begins to explain himself with something more than diplomatic haste; thinking, perhaps, that already the fatal straw may be filling the banker's members. Imperial Catherine does not, of course, consider the putting to death of a mere Scotch banker, and making him in reality what some of his brethren are sometimes called figuratively--a man of straw--worth this fuss; and sets the embassador down in her mind as a person of wild republican ideas, who ought to be recalled as soon as possible by his government, and placed under proper surveillance; but, nevertheless, she causes some inquiries to be made, and learns that it is in consequence of her having ordered "Sutherland" to be stuffed that he is probably then undergoing that operation. Sir Bifstik expresses such horror and consternation at this intelligence, that the Empress believes his mind to be disordered. "What possible consequence can the accidental stuffing of a Scotch banker be to you, milor?" she saith. "The ac-ci-den-t-al stuff-ings of a Scotcher Bankers!" in a German idiom not generally used by our nobility, gasps Sir Bifstik, mechanically, with pale lips and bristling hair.