Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/275

Rh "My cousins!" Ivan repeated. "Ah, madame, how gladly! But I must entreat of you to explain to me my good fortune. It quite bewilders me."

"I can explain very easily. Your mother, Victoire de Talmont, was my husband's much-loved cousin—nay, his sister rather, for he was early left an orphan, and her father was as a father to him. Her only brother, Louis de Talmont, was as his brother, until that hateful revolutionary madness seized upon him, bringing misery and disunion into the household. It was her brother's influence made Victoire give her hand to his friend, the fascinating young Russian, Prince Pojarsky. I cannot deny that this was a great sorrow to my husband, for Prince Pojarsky had embraced the same opinions as Louis de Talmont."

"And did you know him, madame?" Ivan asked eagerly. "Have you ever seen him?"

"I did not know him well. All this happened before my own marriage. But I have seen him more than once—a fine, brilliant young man, magnificent in dress and bearing, and very handsome. You are like him; yet I think I see in you a stronger resemblance to the features of Victoire."

Madame de Talmont's estimate of the young Russian prince had not been very favourable, though she naturally and properly expressed herself as kindly as she could in speaking to his son. But Clémence had always beheld the half-mythical Victoire robed from head to foot in shining garments, woven in the loom of her own youthful romance. To see the son of Victoire in the flesh seemed to be part of "the stuff that dreams are made of" brought suddenly into the realities of waking life. Breaking silence for the first time, she asked,—

"Have you any portrait of your mother, monsieur?"

"I have never even seen one," Ivan answered. "My father's ruin robbed me of everything. The poor mujiks who sheltered me most kindly and most bravely—indeed at the peril of their