"As far as experience goes, you were right, grandmother; for fortresses, as a rule, are taken by force. But in this case Ihnasko was right, for George Csernyi really did buy Belgrade for good coin of the realm. So give the good fellow the coat, and not the whip." The old lady nodded to her man-servant. "Do you hear, Ihnasko? Thus should a just judge decide. Like Prince Ivan, he should give the servant right over the master, if need be, even if it be over his own grandmother. Rejoice, ye people, that your fate will rest in the hands of a man whose lips only know the truth!" Ivan turned away. "But now come nearer, sit down by me, and make your confession. When are you going to marry? It is high time. Have you not made your choice yet?" And Ivan had to answer, "No." He could not tell her that he had been already married three years to a woman who was so utterly heartless that she would not be presented to his old grandmother because she was afraid of her age and wrinkles--so he had answered, "No." "Now you are telling me a fib. Let me feel your pulse. Of course, it was a fib! And why should you not have fallen in love? Look! in this drawer I am keeping a diadem for your bride; it is the same diadem I wore when your grandfather led me to the altar. Then Moscow was the capital of the empire. Where this fine palace stands were nothing but clumps of willows. Now, your bride shall adorn herself with this diadem. Take it; I give it you. You best know who is to wear it. The girl you love shall be my very dear granddaughter." But Ivan, in truth, did not know to whom to give the diadem. He had a wife who had no love for him, and he loved a woman who could never be his wife. Thus to neither could he give it. "I will take care of it, dear granny, until the right one comes." "But now you will stay to supper with me, will you not, that we may eat the last Butter-night meal together? You are not going to be off to any bachelor drinking-party--to get into all sorts of wild company? You will stay, like a good son, with the old grandmother." And so Ivan stayed to supper, and had to declare how much he was enjoying it, when he had dined but so short a time before, and knew all the while that in Zeneida's palace a Lucullus-like feast awaited him. If his digestion rebelled against the sacrifice, his heart made it a thousand times heavier. Oh, the unspeakable agony that overpowered him as he thought how at that very time his affronted wife would be venting her whole vengeance upon that other woman who the world knew had thrown her soft shackles over him, and whom he dared not openly protect, least of all against this aggressor, his own wife! Had the Czar been in St. Petersburg, she would not have dared to molest her; but, in his absence, his powerful favorite, Araktseieff, was supreme.