"I beg ten thousand pardons," he said to the gentleman with whom he was playing; "but I am afraid I must ask you to let me go before the game is done. I have a patient to see at ten o'clock, and the hour has just struck. Here is a friend of mine," he continued, bringing forward one of the bystanders by the arm, "who will, with your permission, play in my place. It is quite immaterial to me whether he loses or whether he wins: I am merely anxious that your game should not be interrupted. Ten thousand pardons again. Nothing but the necessity of seeing a patient could have induced me to be guilty of this apparent rudeness. I wish you much pleasure, gentlemen, and I most unwillingly bid you good night." With that polite farewell, he departed. The patient whom he was going to cure was the sick Russian Empire. He got into his sledge, and drove off to the palace of the Princess Elizabeth. She trembled a little when he told her quietly that the hour had come for possessing herself of the throne; but, soon recovering her spirits, dressed to go out, concealed a knife about her in case of emergency, and took her place by the side of Lestoc in the sledge. The two then set forth together for the French embassy to pick up the second leader of the conspiracy. They found the Marquis alone, cool, smiling, humming a gay French tune, and quietly amusing himself by making a drawing. Elizabeth and Lestoc looked over his shoulder, and the former started a little when she saw what the subject of the drawing was. In the background appeared a large monastery, a grim prison-like building, with barred windows and jealously-closed gates; in the foreground were two high gibbets and two wheels of the sort used to break criminals on. The drawing was touched in with extraordinary neatness and steadiness of hand; and the Marquis laughed gaily when he saw how seriously the subject represented had startled and amazed the Princess Elizabeth. "Courage, madam!" he said. "I was only amusing myself by making a sketch illustrative of the future which we may all three expect if we fail in our enterprise. In an hour from this time, you will be on the throne, or on your way to this ugly building." (He touched the monastery in the background of the drawing lightly with the point of his pencil.) "In an hour from this time, also, our worthy Lestoc and myself will either be the two luckiest men in Russia, or the two miserable criminals who are bound on these" (he touched the wheels) "and hung up afterwards on those" (he touched the gibbets). "You will pardon me, madam, for indulging in this ghastly fancy? I was always eccentric from childhood. My good Lestoc, as we seem to be quite ready, perhaps you will kindly precede us to the door, and allow me the honour of handing the Princess to the sledge?"