“Do you come with us, Ivan Ivanovitch?” he asked abruptly, and of course in Russian, the only language he would tolerate in his presence, although he himself spoke and wrote French with elegance and precision. Ivan saluted him with due respect, but answered in the negative. “Ah! then I shall have the trouble of speaking to the marshal about you,” returned the count, with an air of annoyance, at which Ivan was scarcely surprised, for Rostopchine’s manner on the preceding evening had made him fully aware that he desired to retain him in his own service. So he answered deferentially, “Instead of imposing that trouble upon your excellency, I shall avail myself of the third proposal you did me the honour to make, and very humbly entreat of you to intrust me with despatches for his Imperial Majesty.” Ivan was utterly amazed at the count’s reception of this request. “Then you are as great a fool as I took you for the first day I saw your face. And,” added Rostopchine, with one of his resounding Russian oaths, “you could not possibly be a greater!” Such an address from such a personage, and in the presence of a score of witnesses, might well have disconcerted an older man than Ivan, especially as he could not in the least imagine the cause of it. But to every one’s astonishment he stood his ground, and answered with the utmost coolness and self-possession, “Your excellency’s opinion may be correct, but it must have some better foundation than my choosing to embrace an offer which you yourself condescended to make to me last night.” “He sees no difference between last night and this morning,” remarked Rostopchine, turning to his officers, but speaking in a voice quite loud enough for Ivan to hear. “He is in a mighty hurry to go and tell the Czar that the Kremlin is destroyed.” Then addressing Ivan directly--“I understand you perfectly, young gentleman: you prefer the air of a court to that of a camp, and had rather dangle your feet in the Czar’s ante-chamber than use your hands fighting the French.” If Ivan had not just been performing most hazardous services with signal intrepidity, he might have been angry. But he knew that no one present doubted his courage for an instant, Rostopchine perhaps least of all. So he only bowed, and answered with extreme _sang-froid_, “That being the case, when shall I have the honour of waiting upon your excellency to receive your commands for St. Petersburg?” “I will send them to you in half-an-hour; you need not show your face here again.”[35]