Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/285

Rh of the aged relative with whom they live. They are good enough to tell me she is eager to make my acquaintance. So I go to them to-morrow; indeed, it was with difficulty I contrived to put it off so long, but I could not bear to burden them with a helpless invalid."

"Ah, Barrinka, you make friends everywhere!"

"These friends were made for me, first by you, then by the Czar, who has put all loyal Frenchmen under infinite obligations. But tell me, Michael, what do you think of Paris? I have not been there yet, you know."

"Well, Barrinka," said Michael meditatively, and with the air of an old traveller, "I do not think much of it after all. I would not compare it for a moment with St. Petersburg, not to speak of holy Moscow. I never saw holy Moscow until just before the fire,—and that was like seeing a lovely face with the hand of death upon it,—but this city of the Frenchmen is nothing to it—nothing! To what it was, I mean," he added with a sigh. "Where do you see anything like the great beautiful houses, painted red and green and purple and yellow; like the roofs of burnished lead, all shining as if they were on fire; like the gilded domes and crosses on the tops of our churches? Napoleon himself had the wit to admire them, and to know he had nothing half so good in his own country, so he got the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides gilt to look like one of ours,—a Frenchman told me that himself.—Curse those Invalids!" said Michael, with a sudden change of manner and a look of gloom and ill-humour.

"And why so? What harm have the poor old fellows done to you?" asked Ivan, half laughing.

"Great harm, Barrinka. Think of their having got hold of our own Maria Ivanovka and taken her for themselves!"

"Your—who?"

"Our Maria Ivanovka, who was with us from the day we left St. Petersburg until we entered this same city of