At the sight of the short, stubborn figure, the bull-neck and the grey, fiery eyes rolling in their red sockets, Boleslav was seized with the old boyish terror. He had to pull himself together with a tremendous effort before he could bring the fatal question over his lips. "Father, is it true what people are saying, that----" Suspicion blazed up in the small grey eyes. "Eh?--what are people saying?" he interrupted. "That it was through you that the French found out the path by the Cats' Bridge." "And what if it was through me, you Hottentot? What if I did avenge the wrongs of the down-trampled Pole on this pack of cowardly Russian thieves? These hulking, stupid, lazy serfs, who would only get their deserts if the great Napoleon extirpated them altogether from off the face of the earth. Don't gape at me like that, clown! What I did was done as a sacred duty. Heavily chained, scourged human beings cried out imploringly to me, 'Save us, save us!' I could not save them, it is true; that work was reserved for a greater than I--but I could at least _help_, help him, who like an avenging angel swept over Europe and laid it waste--help to annihilate a handful of ruffians I saw providentially delivered into my hand." As he held forth thus, his short figure seemed to grow. His eyes flashed fire. The demon of fanaticism that so strongly resembles inspiration, its angelic sister, enveloped him in its red-hot, glowing mantle. Boleslav shrank away, trembling. He felt keenly, how completely every tie between him and this man was now severed. "Let them whisper, and nudge each other as I pass," he continued, "and make faces; what the devil do I care? They daren't do it so long as the Corsican lion held them in his claws. And after all, who is to prove it against me? If it hadn't been for that fool Regina, who let her father hunt her down in the Bockshorn, every one would naturally have supposed that General Latour, with his inventive brain, had found out the way over the river and through the wood of his own accord. As it is, the wretches are all at my throat.... The peasants are no longer to be brought to heel with the knout. They've always been so fond of me, you see. If what the papers say is true, and the king is willing to let the mutiny continue, they'll lynch me, as sure as fate. You will have good cause to congratulate yourself on your succession, my boy!" Those were the last words his father had ever spoken to him, for the conversation which had taken place in his own study, was interrupted at this point by the entrance of his aunt. The aristocratic old lady recoiled from the touch of the Baron's red muscular hand as from that of some poisonous reptile. But mastering her repugnance, she asked for a few minutes' private talk with him.