"I know that I shall soon be recalled, and very soon fall back into my old ailment." "Bungler! If only you had kept the Czar's favor until the field-flask contract had been delivered!" "Bah! Say no more about it. Sing me something nice. It's so long since I heard a woman's voice." Alexis Andreovitch really meant it when he said he wanted to hear Daimona sing. Now, the screech of a peacock was a swan's song compared with Daimona's croak. Her voice was out of tune, throaty, and harsh; but if it pleased her lord, what matter? And then the words of her song, with its refrain, "Give him a taste of the knife!" In truth, an extraordinary ditty to choose; and that it should just have come into Daimona's head! Yet what so extraordinary in it, after all, for the fallen favorite's _chère amie_ to choose a revolutionary song, when he had been dismissed from court by his imperial master, and when the matter of the flasks was not settled? Surely reason enough that he who yesterday kissed the dust from off the tyrant's feet to-day should throw it back in his face! And the fallen favorite did not interrupt her. He listened to every verse, enjoying the last so much that he chuckled with delight. "Where did you hear that ridiculous thing?" "You thick-head! Can't you guess? Didn't you yourself send the gypsy girl to me to be educated? We have made a thorough success of it." "Right. Among the many pleasures that await me here is carrying on that joke to the bitter end. She drove my son to Archangel! Not a word have I heard from him yet. What have you been doing to the wench?" "Just what you directed. If you want some fun we'll have her in." "Nothing better just now." Daimona sent a man in search of Diabolka. Meanwhile she whispered something to Alexis Andreovitch, her painted eyebrows dancing with fiendish glee as she did so. Araktseieff seemed to enter fully into the joke; he laughed so loud that he made himself quite hoarse, and, striking his fist on the table, shouted: "Good! Excellent! By Jove! That'll be worth seeing!" Both were looking grave when the girl came in. She was hardly recognizable. A young lady in a long dress, wearing mittens, on her head the snood of a Russian maiden. She held both hands, in national style, hidden in the long sleeves of her dress, only withdrawing them to kiss the hand of her master and mistress. Her eyes she kept modestly fixed on the ground. "Well, dear child, and how do you like being under your mistress's protection?" In a low whisper the girl answered: "Thanks be to my gracious master for having sent me where I am so happy." Araktseieff could scarce repress his laughter. "You speak like a book." "That is not my merit, but that of the reverend Herr Prokop, who has spared no pains to give me the benefit of his instruction."