“My destroyer, my destroyer!” said Tchitchikoff to himself. “He will cut my throat as the wolf tears that of the lamb.”

“I have spared you, I have permitted you to remain free in the city when you should have been in prison; but you have again sullied yourself with the most dishonourable villainy with which a man ever disgraced himself!”

The prince’s lips quivered with anger.

“With what dishonourable deed and villainy does your excellency charge me?” inquired Tchitchikoff, trembling in every limb.

“The woman,” said the prince, stepping a little closer, and looking Tchitchikoff straight in the eye, “the woman who signed that will, at your dictation, has been apprehended; and you will be confronted with her.”

The world grew dark before the eyes of Tchitchikoff, who turned as pale as a sheet.

“Your excellency, I will tell you the real truth of that matter. I am guilty, yes, guilty, but not so guilty My enemies have betrayed me.”

“No one can betray you, for the rascality within you is many times greater than the most abandoned liar could even conceive of. I don’t believe that you have ever done a thing in your life which was not dishonourable. Every copeck that you have acquired has been acquired by the most dishonourable means, and by robbery, and the most disgraceful sort of transactions, which deserve the knout and Siberia. No, there has been enough of this. You will be conveyed this instant to prison; and there, on a level with the vilest of men and with thieves, you will await the judgment on your case. And this is but a slight punishment, for you are far worse than those who are clad in armyaks² and sheepskin coats; for you——” Here he glanced at the coat of Navarino smoke and flame, and, seizing the bellcord, he rang vigorously.

“Your excellency,” cried Tchitchikoff, “have mercy! You are the father of a family: spare me, for the sake of my aged mother!”

“You lie!” exclaimed the prince angrily. “You besought me once in the name of your children and of the wife which you never had, and now it is for the sake of your mother.”

“Your excellency, I am a wretch, and the vilest of good-for-nothings,” said Tchitchikoff. “I really have lied; I really had no wife and children; but God is my witness that I have always wanted to have a wife, to fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen, in order hereafter to actually merit the respect of my fellow-citizens and of the authorities. But how inauspicious has been the course of circumstances! Your highness, I have been forced to win an existence at the cost of my blood. At every step I have encountered deceit and temptation—enemies, corrupters, and robbers. My whole life has been like a stormy tempest, or like a vessel amid the billows, at the mercy of the gale. I am a man, your excellency——”

Tears suddenly streamed in torrents from his eyes. He flung himself at the prince’s feet, just as he was, in his coat of Navarino smoke and flame, his velvet waistcoat, his blue satin neckcloth, his wonderfully well-made trousers, and pressed his brow to the floor, while his finely arranged hair exhaled a sweet scent of eau-de-Cologne of the first quality.

“Get away from me! Call a soldier to take him away!” said the prince to the man who entered.

“Your excellency!” shrieked Tchitchikoff, clasping the prince’s boot with both arms.

“Go away, I tell you!” said the prince, striving to extricate his leg from Tchitchikoff’s embrace.