"Yes; you have been four days at Cronstadt: well, in those four days many things have been done--a light; thank you. The Count is now travelling towards Tobolsk under an escort of Balmain's Lancers. There he will have to hunt the ermine, cultivate asafœtida, or dig in the mines, with a collar at his neck, for the remainder of his days; but for the ladies of his family, a more severe punishment was reserved: ah! he is a stern fellow, old Panim!" "How--what? Vlasfief, you jest?" "'Tis no jest: we don't jest on such matters in Russia," replied Vlasfief, who was too thorough a _roué_--too "used up," in fact--to care for what any woman might suffer or undergo; for every human emotion and sympathy were dead in this man now. "What new horrors am I to hear?" exclaimed Balgonie, with passionate vehemence, as he dashed his heavy Turkish sabre on the table. Vlasfief smiled sourly, and his cunning eyes twinkled. "You are a Scot, like Balmain," said he disdainfully; "and as the Turks--those accursed unbelievers--say, but truly, 'Those who have never seen the world think it is all like their father's house.' Pass the bottle--'tis Cracow wine this, and not worth four ducats the flask. In short, the--the two ladies of the Count's family, in the wildness of their grief,--Mariolizza especially,--on hearing of the death of Mierowitz, permitted their tongues to run riot, and to say such things of Her Imperial Majesty and some of her favourites, such as Count Orloff, Lanskoi, the Grenadier, and so forth, as no woman would pardon, you understand; so they are to be given in succession to _le maître d'entre les épaules_--the master of the shoulders," added Vlasfief, with a species of laugh at the strange expression which he saw gathering in Balgonie's face. "Explain, I implore you, explain!" asked the latter, with quivering lips, as he set down a crystal goblet of Hungarian wine untasted on the table. "Mademoiselle Mariolizza--but you don't drink fairly, Ivanovitch--has received six blows of the knout. The torturer is a new man, and mangled her cruelly. She has had her tongue cut out, and her forehead branded with the executioner's mark;* and she goes to Siberia as soon as she recovers: but she will never reach it alive, even if she escapes the fever that has now seized her; for as the whole family has been degraded,--declared infamous and without protection,--being tongueless, she will become the prey of the Cossacks en route. Once beyond the Volga, we never know what happens. The Count's daughter will undergo exactly similar punishment; and, if she survives it, they will be mercifully permitted to travel together: and there ends the House of Mierowitz, which boasts of its descent from Ruric of Kiev--Ruric the Varagian of Old Ladoga!" * The latter punishment is abolished now.