In the evening the streets of Livorno were filled with turbulent and indignant crowds. The Russians shut themselves up in their houses. Involuntarily I grasped my hat and cloak, and taking the most deserted streets, proceeded to the sea-shore. CHAPTER XV. _REMORSE._ I fell down on the shore. Oh! my God! what anguish! Tears blinded me. Sobs stifled me. I hated, I cursed the whole world. “How,” thought I, “could such a dastardly, godless deed be perpetrated, and I all the while a partaker in the crime?” My whole frame shook with indignation, with madness, as with horror I turned over in my mind every little detail; thought over all the disgusting and dastardly meanness, the fiendish calculation, the treachery of him to whom I had been so faithful and so devoted, and who had not scrupled to sport with that most sacred feeling--love. I could fancy to myself at that very minute that poor deserted woman, half killed with misery. I could picture her in my mind sitting in her dark prison, her soul torn with anguish; who knows, perhaps chained and watched over by coarse, brutal soldiers. “And when did all that take place?” I repeated to myself. “When all seemed so smiling, when all her golden dreams seemed ready to be fulfilled.” The obscure daughter of the late empress had seen at her feet the highest dignitary of the new empress. The whole fleet had met her with cries of joy, with roars of cannon. What must she have felt? what must she have experienced? From under the rock where I was lying I could see the lovely sunset, gilding with its last rays the top of the hills, the crosses on the town churches, and, fading almost entirely, the outlines of the ships at sea. “Oh! infamy! infamy!” I whispered. “Count Orloff has sullied his soul with an action still darker than all the rest. No laurels, not even the laurels of Chesma, will now be able to shield him from the justice of God or man. And also, according to our services, shall justice be meted out to us--his accomplices in that dark deed.” My despair was so strong that I was ready to have done with life. “No; repent all thy life, repent,” seemed to whisper an inner voice. “Search for means to redeem thy dark crime.” A gun was fired from the flag-ship, and on all the other ships nearer were heard the strains of the vesper music, and then the prayers rose on the still air. The sable veil of night descended on the sea; on the guard-ship, and along the shore, the watch-fires began to be lighted. I rose, and, hardly able to drag my feet along, crawled home. There I found the orderly of the count waiting for me. I followed him. “Well! Konsov! now confess you were a little astonished,” said the count coming to meet me.