"Amen to that!" replied Zabern; and in an exultant tone he continued, "but I have tidings for you, Katina, tidings. The princess and the duke are riven asunder. She has plucked him from the cabinet, from the command of the army, and better still from her heart. Never shall Bora put wedding-crown upon the brow of the princess. He is of less account now in her eyes than the driven leaf in the wind-swept wood." Katina expressed her delight by dancing the first steps of a graceful mazurka. "Joy!" she cried. "I never liked that our fair princess should bide on bolster with a Russ, and a Russ who hath sworn at the drink to harness the Polish nobles to the yoke and with them plough his fields. And so John the Strong has fallen! How came it to pass?" The marshal explained; and when Katina learned that Paul had been the direct cause of the duke's downfall she no longer withheld the kiss of friendship. "You have wrought a good deed for Czernova, and I love you for it," she cried impulsively, pressing her lips to his forehead, not once, but twice. And though Katina was not the princess, Paul was fain to confess that she made a charming substitute. "Shades of Kosciusko! what have we here?" cried Zabern, walking towards a smoke-begrimed oil-painting that hung upon one of the walls. "Fie, Katina! you, a daughter of Poland, to keep a portrait of the Czar--that Czar too who crushed us at Warsaw sixteen years ago, the haughty, frowning Nicholas!" "Ah! you Muscovite wolf!" cried Katina, shaking her fist at the picture. "Lying Czar, that broke his coronation-oath to Poland. Where is the constitution you promised us? Grandson of an empress who was a--a--" Katina suppressed the word that rose to her lips, for it was not a pretty epithet, though justly applicable to the moral character of Catherine II. "Hold! let the grandmother be!" interposed Zabern. "Remember that Catherine gave to Czernova its Charter of liberty." "I warrant the old beldam was drunk when she granted it." "No matter, drunk or sober, it _was_ granted. And to-day we have that Charter, signed and sealed, locked in an iron chest, secured in a stone chamber, and guarded by soldiers night and day." "And to think," said Katina, still on the subject of the portrait, and turning to the two Englishmen as she spoke, "to think that your sweet, youthful queen Victoria should allow herself to be embraced and kissed by this Muscovite bear when he parted from her at Windsor!" "It wouldn't do to attempt the same with our princess,--eh, Katina?" "No. Mild and gracious as she naturally is, I warrant she would flash a dagger before his eyes." "Since you hate the original so," asked Paul, "why display his portrait?"