On the way back to Ghedimin Palace naturally nothing was spoken of by the members of the hunt but the exciting scene to which they had just been witness. "_Parole d'honneur_," said the clean-shaven horseman, as he struck his riding-boot with his whip, "the whole world is turned upside down! In the time of the Empress Elizabeth, if any woman had allowed herself to insult a Princess Ghedimin in that manner, she would have had her tongue cut out and have been punished with the knout." "This is what we have to thank exaggerated philanthropy for! It was never created for us. Voltairianism will be the ruin of the nation. How can Araktseieff suffer it?" "The woman is no Russian?" "Perhaps some English or German here to spite us, and who has placed herself under the protection of the Embassy? By Jove! in 1816, when I was last at home, such a thing would not have been permitted!" "These cursed foreigners! Anyway, if the president of the police does not take the matter in hand, we will administer the knout ourselves. I swear your presence alone withheld me just now, Princess Maria Alexievna!" "Indeed! You do not know who the woman is." "What does it matter who she is? She may even be a princess." "She is more than that." "Then some expatriated queen, perhaps from Georgia." "Silence!" said the lady, as she gave a warning look in the direction of the girl riding at her other side. "She does not understand German. So the woman is really a queen?" At this question the lady laughed heartily. "Really a queen! A true queen! A reigning queen--an absolute monarch! We all are her slaves; you, I, even Alexis Maximovitch. A queen who is not to be driven out of her kingdom by means of cannon, but with this!" and she held out to her companion the whistle of her shattered riding-whip. "What! an actress?" "Of course. What else should she be?" "Ha, ha, ha! To whom the whistle means a revolution; whose throne is upset by hisses! Ah, Maria Alexievna, present me with this whistle. With it I will fight for you, as a knight _sans peur et sans reproche_." The lady resigned the fatal weapon, so efficacious in the downfall of stage potentates, to her cavalier, as the latter lifted her out of her saddle in the portico of the Ghedimin Palace. He then kissed her hand. She kissed him on the cheek, and, taking the young girl by the hand, she passed through a treble glass door and ascended the broad frescoed staircase within. Here the hunting-party broke up, making rendezvous at the opera that evening. Now the silent, bestarred gentleman, who had hitherto not mixed in the conversation, slapping the clean-shorn one on the back with the flat of his hand, said: "Nicholas Sergievitch, a word with you. Come along with me." "At your service, Alexis Maximovitch." And together they rode off to the Araktseieff Palace.