“No; never to any one around me--scarcely even to dear old Petrovitch. Yet to my sovereign, in one hour, the whole secret of my life flashed out, I know not how. I told all;--how ever since I heard the story of my birth in early boyhood, I dreamed of that exiled father, dwelling forlorn and solitary in the frozen desert of Siberia; how I longed to seek him out and comfort him, and even dared to cherish the hope that one day I might win his pardon and restore him to his home. But, even as I spoke thus, a sudden overwhelming sense of the presence in which I stood swept over me. I was confounded, struck dumb, paralyzed with the sense of my own boldness. At last I stammered, by way of excuse, ‘I implore of your Majesty to pardon me; you can understand how the sad fate of a father must shadow the life of a son!’” Adrian uttered a groan of dismay. “Most luckless of men!” he cried. “Never in all your days did you make a blunder until that moment. My friend Ivan, it is clear you are no courtier; you may as well give up the game at once and come back to the camp with me.” “Why so?” asked Ivan, terribly disconcerted. “What have I said amiss? I don’t understand--” “You don’t understand! Have you forgotten the fate of the Czar Paul, and the unfortunate circumstances under which his majesty began his reign?” “Utterly!” cried the horror-stricken Ivan, growing red and pale by turns. “Oh, what have I done?--I never dreamed of any sorrow save my own.” But after a long pause he resumed, with a look of returning composure: “I think he did not misunderstand me. It is true I saw a look of pain pass across his face, and I wondered at it for a moment. But his manner to me grew even gentler than before. He asked me what my father’s supposed crime had been, and I told him frankly. Then he said, ‘He shall be sought out and restored to you, if he be not already beyond our reach;’ and he added, ‘Beyond the reach of God he cannot be. Is it not so?’ I thought he waited for an answer, and I said, ‘Yes, sire.’ That was nearly the end. He told me I should receive a communication to-morrow through the Governor of St. Petersburg, General Soltikoff. Then I kissed his hand; and the gentleman-in-waiting, who accompanied me to the gate of the palace, asked for my address. Now, Adrian, you know as much as I can tell you. But,” he added to himself, “not _all_; the look, the tone, the manner, these are mine, mine only. These it is that give me the precious sense that I myself--Ivan Ivanovitch Pojarsky--am recognized, thought of, cared for.” CHAPTER XIX. THE CHEVALIER GUARD. “I sang the joyful pæan clear, And, sitting, burnished without fear The brand, the buckler, and the spear-- “Waiting to strive a happy strife, To war with falsehood to the knife, And not to lose the good of life.”