“But that is impossible. Excuse me,” I tried to answer; “your actions are bold, but you have not reflected enough.” “Why do you think so?” asked the Princess, astonished. “The malcontents are seeking revenge, the forgotten recompense for their well-known services. To Orloff alone--and that every one knows--to him alone Ekaterina owes her throne.” The Princess rose, walked up and down the room, and at last threw the window open. She was nearly stifled. She began again explaining her plan in its smallest details: how she hoped, with the aid of the fleet, to invade Russia. She would listen to none of my arguments. It seemed as if nothing could convince her. It was plainly visible that this capricious, spoiled, self-willed woman, whose feelings burst forth like lava hidden under ashes, thought she could measure her strength with the most desperate of men. “You doubt; you are astonished,” she exclaimed, with a nervous tremor. “You ask why I believe in the success of my enterprise? Is it possible that you do not know?… Already many of your countrymen side with me; I am in correspondence with numbers of them.… But you--are the first Russian, the first really worthy man, that I see throwing in your lot with me.… I shall never forget the fact; it is specially dear to me.… Believe me, I shall rise victorious out of every difficulty; the darkness _will_ clear away.… Is it possible that you do not know that Russia is torn asunder by her battles, the pressgang for the recruits, the fires, the plagues? Is it possible you do not know that the country is worn out with her taxations, that on the borders of the Volga there rages a terrible, bloody insurrection? Your army is badly clothed, and still worse fed; … all are discontented, all grumble.… You are not going to tell me that you, a lieutenant in the Russian navy, know nothing of all this? Yes, all the nation will hail me with delight; the army will meet with joy a Russian-born princess, Elizabeth II., just as they once met Ekaterina.” I was indignant at her childish and blind confidence in herself. “Well, let it be so. Do you speak Russian?” I decided on asking her. The Princess blushed. “I do not speak it. I have, of course, forgotten it, unfortunately,” she answered, coughing. “In my infancy, when but three years old, I was taken from Oukraine to Siberia, where they nearly poisoned me; from there into Persia, where I was placed with an old woman in Ispahan, who took me to live in Bagdad, where a certain M. Fournier taught me French.… So it would have been rather strange if I did remember my own language.” I still continued sitting, my eyes fixed on the ground. I could not raise them to her face. “And Dimitri Tzarevitch,[15] whom all Moscow met so joyfully, did he speak Russian?” asked the Princess contemptuously. “Besides, what can languages prove? Children learn and unlearn everything so easily.”