"No; the cardinal, having been the chief instrument in the princess's conversion, shrank somewhat from facing the wrathful Muscovites last night. He preferred the opera-house." "The coward! Would that I had been there!" "What! at the opera? Yes, it was well worth visiting, because--" "A truce to your fooling. What happened next?" "After order had been restored--for, of course, Radzivil's statement provoked a devil of a row--Lipski rose and begged leave to bring in a new bill. Lamenting the increased taxation--and you know, marshal, my Budget is devilishly heavy this year--he introduced a measure for the appropriation of all plate, jewels, and money belonging to the conventual establishments throughout Czernova, such wealth to be devoted to the needs of the state." "Ha!" cried Zabern. "This is nothing else but an attack upon the princess's faith. 'I have become a Catholic,' she avers. 'Then we will plunder your Church,' is, in effect, the Muscovite answer." "True, marshal; for though the bill affects to treat both creeds, Latin and Greek, alike, yet inasmuch as the Latin convents are numerous and wealthy, while those of the Greek faith are few and comparatively poor--" "It's a case of 'I'll share my kopek with you, if you'll share your rouble with me,' eh?" "Just so, marshal. Well, the bill was rushed through its first reading--" "Fire and brimstone! where, then, was our party with its splendid majority?" "You forget that Rubini was here last night." "Who's he?" asked Zabern, whose ignorance of everybody and everything outside the circle of politics was simply astounding. "Come, marshal, you jest--Rubini, the Italian, the great opera-singer." "The devil fly away with him! Well?" "The opera was 'The Bohemian Girl.' Rubini took the part of Thaddeus. It would have brought the tears to your eyes, marshal, to hear him sing, 'When the fair land of Poland was ploughed.'" "It would--to hear a damnable Italian turning the sorrows of our fatherland into a medium for putting rouble-notes into his pockets. But what has this to do with the Diet?" "Why, most of those on our side of the House went to hear Rubini." "Including a simpleton named Dorislas. And so Lipski and his Muscovite crew took advantage of the emptiness of the benches on the Right to spring this new bill upon the Diet. But, sword of St. Michael, didn't Radzivil send Opalinski to the opera-house to summon away the absentee fools?" "He did, with this result. When Opalinski arrived Rubini was singing, and our whip became so entranced that he quite forgot the errand on which he had come, till--till it was too late. When our fellows came trooping back they were met with derisive laughter from the Left." "The bill had already passed its first reading?" "Precisely, marshal. But that's not all. Lipski had likewise proposed that, pending the issue of this infernal bill, the precincts of the monasteries shall be patrolled by the military."