"Bethsaba! What a capital idea! Don't let me forget it. I will propose it to him as soon as ever he is in better spirits. Just now he is so depressed. After he had said good-bye he came back to me again. 'I forgot to ask how you were?' 'That proves,' said I, 'that I must be looking well.' Looking anxiously at me, he asked if my face was always as red as then; and I, laughing, said 'Yes. But why are you so anxious? Does not the good God know how you love me; and are you not the anointed, the chosen one of Him to whom you pray for my recovery to health?' 'Yes, He knows,' he answered, gloomily, 'that I love you. But was not King David also His anointed, chosen servant? And did not the king sing all night through his despairing, penitential Psalm, and yet his child was taken from him, in punishment of his sin with Bathsheba?'" "Who was that Bathsheba?" broke in the king's daughter. "It can only be another form for Bethsaba. Was there really any one who bore that name before me? I have hitherto searched in vain to find a namesake in society or in the Calendar. Never have I been able to find one. My godmother, Duchess Korynthia, who named me so at my christening--up to my sixth year I was a heathen--in answer to my question why I could not find it in any Calendar, told me it was another name for Elizabeth, and that St. Elizabeth's day was my name-day; and they give me presents on that day. And now the Czar has told you that there really was a Bathsheba. Who was she?" "I do not know any more than you. I have never been taught anything about her, although I am curious to know. I asked old Helena, and got from her that Bathsheba was St. David's wife; but that was all she knew, for only the priests are allowed to read the Bible. On that account it is written in Bulgarian." "But why, then, should she not be among the saints in the Calendar?" "Of course, because she was a Jewess!" "But he said she had sinned. Oh, why did my godmother give me the name of a sinful woman?" And Bethsaba was ready to cry. "Bethsaba, dear," said Sophie, "please don't tell anybody what I have told you about the Czar's tour and the triumphal arch." "But if my godmother asks what we have been talking about?" "Tell her something else." "What else?" "Make up a fib." "A fib! How does one do that? I have never done it." Sophie Narishkin laughed in great amusement. She had learned to lie and fib as quite a little child. Instead of "mamma" she had had to say "madam"; and if her father brought her bonbons to tell people that "Nicolo" (_la mère Cicogne_) had brought them.