The hounds were cringingly snuffing about her whom the moment before they had been ready to tear in pieces; the huntsman, too, was not less susceptible to the charm than was the pack. Raising his whip, he touched his cap courteously with it, and addressed her in French, the language of Russian society: "It were unnecessary, madame, that you should use firearms, possessing as you do in your eyes such powerful weapons." By this speech the huntsman betrayed the school of Versailles, where men were accustomed to carry on war with compliments, and to mask retreat with gallant words. Meanwhile the rest of the hunting-party had come up to the gates. The gentlemen, seeing with whom their comrade was in conversation, held in their horses, as though not wishing to take part in it; only an older man, wearing an order set in diamonds on his fur-lined coat, approached nearer; and one of the ladies, galloping straight up to the gate, pulled up her horse at its threshold, the body of the dead stag alone separating her from the other woman. The huntswoman wore a blue, fur-bordered jacket, with hunting-cap to match, under which her fair hair hung in ringlets to the shoulders. Her face was crimsoned with eagerness and the extreme cold, giving to her somewhat prominent eyes a still more dazzling brilliancy than they were wont to have; her thin, delicately shaped lips were half open; the blue veil falling over her forehead, and the blue band she wore under her chin as a protection from the cold, did not allow more of her face to be seen. But as she drew up close beside the other lady she pushed back the chin band, perhaps in order to speak more freely, thereby displaying a pretty, rosy chin, divided by charming dimples. "How dared you shoot that stag?" she cried to the other lady. "Did you not know it was an imperial one?" "How dared you chase that stag to the very gates of the hospital? Did you not know that it is a hospital for cripples?" "I hope you recognize that the Czar is the first gentleman in Russia." "Throughout the whole world the first gentlefolks are the sick." "You are foolhardy, madame." "That I admit." Now the huntswoman lifted her veil. She was heated. She toyed impatiently with the riding-whip in her hand. "Why am I not a man?" she muttered, between her pearly teeth. The huntsman with the clean-shaven face, reading from his companion's working features and piercing eyes that there was something more in dispute than the shot stag, now bending towards her, addressed her audibly enough in German. For though the French language--that of the best-beloved enemy--is the language of society in the Russian capital, German--that of the most hated friend--is only spoken by the exclusive. German is therefore spoken when the servants are not desired to understand. "A rival, eh?" asked the clean-shaven one. The huntswoman projected her lips scornfully, and, knitting her brows, answered aloud in German: "Neither rival nor----"