Less than all had he the courage to go to Zeneida's palace. He dreaded more to look into her face than into the mouth of a cannon. She defied danger, while he, who had dragged her into it, fled from it. At last, however, he could no longer delay seeking her. He must cross Moika bridge. But the toll-keepers would see him; the canal was frozen, so, descending the steps of the stone quay, Ghedimin prepared to cross the ice in order to reach the other side. Scarce had he gone two steps before he heard his name whispered behind him. Startled, he turned. From under one of the arches peeped a well-known face--that of Duke Odojefski, a bloodthirsty braggart, who but that morning would have mown men down right and left; now all his courage had oozed out, and he was hiding under the arch of a bridge! "Don't venture near Zeneida's! Her palace is surrounded!" whispered he, and crept back into his hiding-place again. What a sight! Odojefski in hiding! The colonel, whose battalion is even now fighting on Isaacsplatz; the duke, whose palace is among the grandest of the capital, whose family name is renowned in history, who himself has claimed a place between Brutus and Riego--in hiding behind a snow-drift! And what is he about there? Scarring his face with a stick of caustic to render himself unrecognizable. Ghedimin lost his head completely. Turning back by the other bank, he hurried home. There arrived, he wrote on a visiting-card, "I entreat you, for Heaven's sake, to come across to my grandmother's house. I have important secrets to confide to you." This card he sent up by his house-porter to Korynthia. He himself then repaired to his grandmother's. It was his last refuge. Without it was already night. The roar of cannon did not cease. The watch-fires were the only lights in the imperial capital. * * * * * Good old Anna Feodorovna was still alive among her fortune-telling cards, her purring cats, and her faithful Ihnasko, with whom she counted the days still remaining before the New-year. "Another New-year! What will it bring with it? Who will live through it?" It is the day after Christmas day. If two tapers of equal length are lighted on that evening, one can tell who will die first, the husband or the wife, by seeing whose taper is the first to burn out. This time it was the wife's taper. "Well, God's will be done," sighed the old woman, "if I must go first. And it is time; I have lived long enough! But I cannot but pity the poor old man, whose life will be so lonely without me. He must not be told that I am dead. Let him think I am still alive. And see that every birthday and name-day he gets one of the red nightcaps I always give him. Do you hear, Ihnasko?" "Oh, don't keep on talking so much about dying, your Highness," ejaculated the old man, with chattering teeth. "All my bones are shaking, without that, from the thunder of those cannons."