He was a man well on in years; his stature was not great, neither was his presence dignified; he stooped a little and was thick set, with a venerable beard, undefiled by steel; for, like a true old Muscovite, he contended that man was made in the image of God, and should neither be cut or carved upon. His eyebrows were white, but his eyes were dark, keen, quick, and expressed a spirit of ready impulse, for laughter or for ferocity--one, who by turns could be suave or irritable, especially when under the influence of wine, which generally made him fierce and stupid; for never, in all his life, had he suffered control or had his will disputed. His silver hair was simply tied behind with a black ribbon; in his hand he carried a little cap of black wolf's fur, adorned by rudely set jewels; he wore a queerly cut coat of dark red cloth trimmed with fur, and wore breeches of the same stuff, and lacked but a dagger and pistols with brass Turkish butts at his girdle, to seem what he really was, in disposition and character, a type of the boyar of the old school, who preferred quass to champagne, ate his pancakes with caviare, and was proud of being a specimen of the old Russian noble, as he existed in the time of Peter the Great, when his class first united some of the vices and luxuries of Western Europe to their native lawlessness and hardy ferocity. Such was Count Mierowitz. "When did you last see my son?" he asked, in tone more of authority than of anxious inquiry. "Some three months since, Excellency: he has been detached on the Livonian frontier." "And you, Captain--" "I am proceeding on urgent imperial service from Novgorod where my regiment is stationed in the old palace of the Czars." "To whither?" "Schlusselburg." The host changed countenance and almost manifested signs of discomposure on hearing of that formidable fortress and prison--the veritable Bastille of St. Petersburg, and he said: "A name to shudder at--by St. Nicholas it is!" "And, but for the feather in the wax of my dispatch," resumed Balgonie (showing a red government seal in which a piece of feather twitched from a pen was inserted, the usual Russian emblem of _speed_), "I had not, perhaps, tempted the dangers of the Louga, but sought a billet on the other side, if such could be found." "You know not, perhaps, that my woods are full of wolves; but this is not the way to St. Petersburg." "Yet I was so directed, Excellency." "You have been misled, and are only some seventy versts or so from the place you have left." "You amaze me, Count," exclaimed the perplexed Captain; for in the Russian service, an error becomes a crime. "Captain, you should have gone by Gori, Oustensk, Spask, and so on." "That devil of a Podatchkine, an orderly of General Weymarn, who sent him specially with me, has either deluded or abandoned me."