Tatiana and Salvières were about to speak in chorus; but Piotr, who for once in his tender life had been silently listening, gave them no chance to do so. “Malou! my little darling Malou!” he shrieked, jumping into the air, rubber-ball wise. “Are we going to see little darling Malou?” He had become three shades redder than Pavlo himself, and his eyes were sparkling with joy. “Dear me!” commented Salvières. “If this Piotr was a few short years older you could look to your laurels, Pavlo; he certainly is a most ardent lover of beauty.” But the ardent one was gambading like an escaped colt, and Pavlo hid his confusion by endeavoring to catch him, and as he put it, “to make him behave.” “Now do your worst!” he cried, capturing the delighted child and pinioning his arms behind him. “Here one must be awfully serious, you know, Piotr, or one gets put under arrest.” “_Je m’en fiche pas mal!_” responded Piotr, who was not often parliamentary. “And now show me your _isba_, Cousin Pavlo, and all the camp. Because it will be the only chance I’ll have if we are setting off to-morrow to see little darling Malou.” “To-morrow? You absurd person! But, come, I’ll betray to you as much of the secrets of a military encampment as is compatible with my duty, since you are, according to Mamma, so admirably grown-up; then if she permits it I’ll drive back home with you for dinner.” It was getting late when the Salvières carriage re-entered the magnificent park of Tsarsköe-Seloe, where the adolescent foliage of its venerable limes was undershot by the last slant of the setting sun. The Imperial Park has, especially in the early gloaming, a somber grandeur that is very impressive, as though in the twilight its loveliness were on tiptoe to reveal to you something new and startling about the ancient past. Eight o’clock was booming when the horses left the Palace, emerging from its glorious _parterres_ to their left, and trotted rapidly on beneath the vaulting boughs of the broad _allée_ skirting the lake, which was now shining like molten metal of a vaguely roseate hue. Further on a gilt cupola--that of the baths--rising from a promontory biting tooth-like into the glancing water, burned into the fainting pink and lilac of the sky, and, further still, tier upon tier of slowly dusking greens seemed the boundary line of some untrodden forest. They finally emerged through the colossal bronze portal of Alexander I., whereon is inscribed in golden letters, Russian on one side and French on the other, the words: “_To my beloved companions in arms_”; and soon drew up before the Salvières villa.