"You were right to add 'if possible,' my friend," replied the other calmly but bitterly. "Already compromised by desertion, my father and betrothed wife chained in a fortress by the Neva, what terms would Catharine offer us? Carl Ivanovitch," he added, with a lofty smile, "I do not press you to join us, or seek to lure you into the dangers of an enterprise the enthusiasm of which you cannot share. I do not seek even to turn your presence as a trusted staff officer in Schlusselburg to account, though it might further our objects, and be the means, perhaps, by strategy, of saving many a valuable life. Still less do I desire to turn to account your intimacy with the young Emperor Ivan, though I envy you that great privilege. Even in the love I bear my sister (though it might tempt you to cast your lot with us--_with her_ shall I say?), I leave you unquestioned and free." "I thank you, Basil," said Balgonie sadly, and with a heightened colour, caused by irrepressible annoyance at the last remark of Mierowitz. "But we have all sworn before the altar of our Lady of Kazan, and the image of St. Sergius, to devote our lives to the matter in hand; so retreat is impossible--advice and entreaty alike unavailing." Balgonie felt an acute pang on hearing this; for he knew that in Russia no place was esteemed as more holy than the church of our Lady of Kazan in St. Petersburg. Around its shrine--the _sanctum sanctorum_ of which no woman has ever entered--are the keys of conquered cities, the banners of a thousand slaughtered armies, and the batons and sabres of their leaders, the Frenchman, the Turk, the Pole, the Persian, and the Dane, the Swede and the German; and he knew, too, that no image, to the Muscovite mind, is more sacred than that of St. Sergius--the same absurd idol which the Kazan column bore with them at the battle of the Alma, and displayed in vain to the advancing bayonets of old Sir Colin's Highland Brigade.