“My good General, how am I to explain things if you will interrupt me? Circumstances, monsieur, impelled the General, as a man of honour, to quit his Majesty’s service and enter that of the Queen. I was already in her Majesty’s household, and my wife and I followed her here as a matter of course. She did not ask us to remain. In fact, she entreated us with tears to return to Thracia and make our peace with her son, while she retained only her ladies about her person. Would you expect us to do that, monsieur? to forsake our august mistress when she was abandoned by all her friends, treated with the most revolting cruelty by those who ought to have----” an inarticulate remonstrance from the General. “In a word, monsieur, we are here, and here we stay.” “You could do nothing else,” said Mansfield warmly. Then, remembering the object of his journey, he added, with lamentable duplicity, “I was anxious to see the Institution; but if her Majesty is there, I suppose visitors are not admitted. Or perhaps there are stated hours?” “It is always possible to see the Institution, monsieur. Her Majesty would never consent to interfere with the work of the good sisters, who are a blessing to the whole countryside. But her own apartments, and a small enclosed garden upon which they look, are sacred to her. She receives no one, and she has not quitted the Institution since first she entered it.” “Never left the one spot!” cried Mansfield, aghast. “Surely she must--I mean, has she taken any vows?” “The Lutherans are not like the Orthodox or the Latins, monsieur, and their deaconesses are not bound by irrevocable vows. It is her Majesty’s pleasure not to receive, and it is not for us to question it. The emissaries of the King and the Princess of Dardania made themselves so obnoxious on her first arrival that, outraged by their presumption and persistence, she came to this resolution. And is there any one who has a right to decide for her Majesty in the matter?” “Certainly not,” said Mansfield politely, for the tone of the question was fierce. “There is a certain person,” pursued M. Stefanovics, “attached to the household of the Princess of Dardania--a Colonel Czartoriski, I believe--who has been hanging about this neighbourhood for weeks, riding up from Damascus day after day, in the hope of being received by her Majesty and delivering into her hands a letter from his mistress. Of course he has not been successful. Is it likely that her Majesty would receive him, when we, her two faithful servants, have never been permitted to see her face the whole time she has been here?” “You have never once seen her?” cried Mansfield. “Stefanovics, you talk too much,” said General Banics again.