“I thank you,” Von Gaden answered dryly; “but I know well what you of noble blood think of the surgeons who sew up the slashes made by your blades. But no matter. I am moved to tell you the story of Ramodanofsky. I will recount the whole affair; part of it--the last part--from my own experience, the rest I have gathered sometimes by inquiry, sometimes by accident. There were two brothers of the name, the elder Feodor, and the younger Vladimir, whom you have seen, both old men now, if both had lived. They were of different mothers. Feodor was the son of a Polish woman, the old boyar’s first wife; Vladimir is pure Russian, or Tartar, which you please. Feodor was the favorite, and inherited the estates and the wealth, while Vladimir came off but poorly. The two men hated each other; the tie of a common fatherhood never bound them; yet I believe that the Boyar Feodor Ramodanofsky was just to his half-brother, who was, in a way, dependent upon him; but you can imagine how the father’s discrimination in favor of the elder rankled with a man like Vladimir. Feodor went to France at one time, and while there, married a beautiful young Frenchwoman, of noble family, and connected, I believe, on her mother’s side with the Polish mother of Feodor. He brought home his bride, and in a year or so a child was born to them, to their great disappointment not a boy, but a girl. Vladimir was then serving in the army, fighting the Don Cossacks, at the time of Stenka Razin’s insurrection, for it was during the reign of Alexis the Debonair. When he returned, he was poorer and more reckless than ever. Whether he loved Feodor’s wife or not, it is hard to tell, but he began to make love to her whenever his brother was absent. Marie Ramodanofsky was a noble woman, I knew her; her daughter has inherited her beauty, along with her father’s spirit. She resented Vladimir’s treachery, but she dreaded to tell her husband, who was a passionate and jealous man, and who hated his brother for a hundred evil traits that he knew, without adding this one. But at last her position became unendurable, and she told her husband. There is no doubt that a bitter scene ensued, and the boyar, in the first flush of his anger and jealousy, must have falsely accused her of encouraging his brother; when he left her to go in search of the traitor, her attendants found her in a deathlike swoon. Meanwhile, Feodor followed Vladimir to the Kremlin, and finding him on the Red Staircase, a fight ensued. Feodor was the more powerful man of the two, but he was blind with rage, and it is said that Homyak, the court dwarf, who was patronized by Vladimir, seeing the fight going against the latter, tripped up the elder brother, and he fell from the top to the bottom of the Red Staircase, the blood flowing from a gash in his cheek. I was in the palace, attending the Czarevna Sophia, and was summoned to the wounded man. Vladimir had disappeared, and Homyak gave a garbled version of the fight.