With these words he turned away, and what he had further to say to Johanna was inaudible from kisses and laughter. That which Krizsanowski had promised in the sitting of the Szojusz Blagadenztoiga had come about--the incredible fact that a man could voluntarily resign his succession to the throne of the mightiest empire in the world, and in such a manner that, did he ever repent, he might never undo his act. That incredible fact had become not a possibility, but a thing accomplished. The solution to the riddle was, as Zeneida had divined at the time, Johanna. For the present, however, none knew of it save the participators and the trees of the ancient forest about them. Ah! what a terrific, world-wide catastrophe was this idyl to bring about! CHAPTER XXI THE MOST POWERFUL RULER OF THEM ALL While the members of "the green book" were at work on their wide-spreading plans, those of the Bear's Paw had made others to their way of thinking. Passing over the military, and turning their backs upon the league of the aristocrats, they took up a ground of their own, calling themselves "Napoleonists!" What induced them to choose that extraordinary name for themselves? Well, it is easy enough to make the poor believe their lot to be a hard one; it was at that time that the Russian Volkslied was written-- "My soul I give to God; My head I give the Czar; My body beneath my master's feet; The grave is all I call my own!" Within the last four years especially the iron hand of adversity had pressed heavily on the country. The earth no longer gave back the seed sown upon it; terrific fires had reduced the large cities to ashes; and a pestilence, hitherto unknown in the land, had crept over the frontier and devastated the population. The streams and rivulets had become floods, carrying away whole towns at a moment's notice; locusts, caterpillars of a kind and species never seen before, came down in shoals, tormenting man and beast; great war-ships out at sea sank with all their men and ammunition on board. And all this was Heaven's retribution because the Czar had not gone to the assistance of the Greeks fighting for their freedom. Against miracles, counter-miracles alone can be effectual. And the present century had produced a miracle in the form of a man: his name, Napoleon. It was all a lie that the English had taken him prisoner at Waterloo! All a lie that he was being kept in confinement on the island of St. Helena! He was in hiding, though the whereabouts must not at present be divulged. Where was that place? Only so much might be known, that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of Irkutsk. Thence he would come, as soon as the people's cup of bitterness was filled to the brim, to tread down the mighty, and free every people under the sun.