Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/185

Rh your excellency, I shall avail myself of the third proposal you did me the honour to make, and very humbly entreat of you to intrust me with despatches for his Imperial Majesty."

Ivan was utterly amazed at the count's reception of this request. "Then you are as great a fool as I took you for the first day I saw your face. And," added Rostopchine, with one of his resounding Russian oaths, "you could not possibly be a greater!"

Such an address from such a personage, and in the presence of a score of witnesses, might well have disconcerted an older man than Ivan, especially as he could not in the least imagine the cause of it. But to every one's astonishment he stood his ground, and answered with the utmost coolness and self-possession, "Your excellency's opinion may be correct, but it must have some better foundation than my choosing to embrace an offer which you yourself condescended to make to me last night."

"He sees no difference between last night and this morning," remarked Rostopchine, turning to his officers, but speaking in a voice quite loud enough for Ivan to hear. "He is in a mighty hurry to go and tell the Czar that the Kremlin is destroyed." Then addressing Ivan directly—"I understand you perfectly, young gentleman: you prefer the air of a court to that of a camp, and had rather dangle your feet in the Czar's ante-chamber than use your hands fighting the French."

If Ivan had not just been performing most hazardous services with signal intrepidity, he might have been angry. But he knew that no one present doubted his courage for an instant, Rostopchine perhaps least of all. So he only bowed, and answered with extreme sang-froid, "That being the case, when shall I have the honour of waiting upon your excellency to receive your commands for St. Petersburg?"

"I will send them to you in half-an-hour; you need not show your face here again."