The général procureur threw a side-long glance from behind the green _abat-jour_ on his visitor. “And you’re not joking, Alexis Gregorevitch? It’s your advice?” “Oh! for the good of my country, and like a true patriot--not only would I advise, but very much recommend,” answered Orloff, walking backwards and forwards, munching the sweet melting biscuits. “_Mais, c’est un assassin dans l’âme!_” thought to himself the great judge,[40] whose personal appearance was austere and generally gloomy, as he listened in horror to the soft, cat-like tread of Orloff on the carpet; “_c’est en lui comme une mauvaise habitude_!” Orloff took out his eye-glass, and, biting a fresh biscuit, began to admire a picture of Psyche and Cupid on the wall. “Whence came this picture?” asked he. “It is a gift from the empress.… Count, when do you think of returning to Moscow?” “To-morrow morning. I shall not of course delay my information, but shall instantly report the fresh obstinacy of that impudent liar.” Viazimski knit his bushy eyebrows. “Do you know anything about the information of the prisoner on your own account?” he grunted out, turning over some papers. Orloff let drop his half-eaten biscuit. “Yes! Now, just fancy; you’ll not deny all this is disgusting. My faithfulness, devotion, honour, she has spared nothing.… And let me tell you what is more astonishing than everything else, that that she-devil fell over head and ears in love with me, and invented, goodness knows what; but even just now the hussy has had the impudence to bid me acknowledge a marriage with her.” “Well! I can only wonder,” said Viazimski; “that disguise in clerical vestments--excuse me, what need for such sacrilege? Oh! you’ll have a deal to answer for, to God, Batiushka Count.… All that would haunt me.” Orloff tried to turn it all off as a joke, tried to go on talking, but the gloomy silence of the bear-like Procureur showed him that his credit at court had been long on the decline, and that he, notwithstanding his late services, might, like useless old rubbish, hope for only one thing--to be left alone and forgotten. “My annals are finishing, it seems. I shall soon be at the bottom of the river,” thought Orloff, on leaving Viazimski. “They’ll put me under hatches somewhere in Moscow, or perhaps farther. We are grown old, out of fashion; we must clear the way for new-comers.” He was so much disturbed by his reception at the procureur’s that the next morning he had a special service celebrated in the Church of the Holy Virgin Mary, and before his departure for Moscow he even paid a visit to an Armenian fortune-teller on the Litienaya. CHAPTER XXIII. _ORLOFF AT MOSCOW._