"I would not advise any one who values sound limbs in his body to presume to look down upon you, Excellency or no Excellency!" cried the Viceroy, wrathfully, menacing his own face with his fists in the glass. "True, this Araktseieff was devoted hand and foot to my father--he followed him about like a dog. Yet, for all that, I'd rather know him to be safe on the island which Kotzebue named after him, in the Yellow Sea, than here." "Why, dearest?" asked his wife, as she tied and arranged the Grand Duke's necktie. "Oh, women have nothing to do with state secrets," he answered, as he strove to twirl the ends of his mustache evenly--an attempt in which all his efforts were unavailing, for one side would not keep together. Woe to the private if the Grand Duke's eyes lighted on an ill-waxed mustache! "I only tell you he may esteem himself a lucky man if I have no cane at hand during our interview." "Oh, don't terrify me, dearest!" "I was only joking. May I not have my bit of fun? Well, are we ready now? I am hungry. I have been working all the morning like any corporal." "We will go, then. Won't you choose out one of your sticks?" In every room of the palace where the Grand Duke went, even in his wife's dressing-room, stood a couple of sticks; and it was as much as any one's life was worth to move them from where he placed them. "A stick? For what? I am not lame." "No; but to chastise the culprit, he who ran you into such danger. You might have been killed. He well deserves to be punished." "Does he, really? Well, then, you choose one. What, this good, stout one? Ah, that won't break so easily. So you feel more for me than for the man who injured me? Come, that is a rare trait in your sex. Women usually expend their sympathy on the guilty. Now, then, let us be off." Johanna took Constantine's left arm; the stick was in his right hand. In the armory hall the delinquent, with head bound up and swollen cheeks, was awaiting sentence. He trembled like a dog when he saw the Grand Duke in the doorway. "You scoundrel!" snorted the monster, swishing his cane threateningly through the air. "You deserve a good sound hiding! Can you not look out when you are driving? So you have got badly hurt? There, take these five rubles--buy yourself doctor's stuff with them. Gallows bird! What, you limp! Then take the stick to walk with, you good-for-nothing!" And he passed on with his wife. A monster arm in arm with his good genius! "Humph!" growled the Grand Duke. "It is odd. You have discovered the better self within me; and now it almost seems as if I, too, were sensible of it." The two gentlemen were already in the dining-hall. There were no other guests. The Viceroy was not particularly hospitable; nor had he much occasion to exercise that virtue, for the people over whom he ruled came but seldom to the palace. But they must stand high in favor who were allowed to sit at his table when his wife, Johanna, was present.