While all countenances were still beaming with delight over a precious bon mot which Feodor had just perpetrated, and at which the empress herself had laughed aloud, he stepped up to her and requested her blessing on his voyage to Germany, which he was going to commence that night.

Catharine felt almost inclined to withdraw her orders and request him to remain, but she was woman enough to be able to read pride and defiance in his face.  She therefore contented herself with wishing him a speedy return to his duty.  Publicly, in the presence of the whole court and her new favorite, she afforded Prince Stratimojeff a fresh triumph:  she bade him kneel, and taking a golden chain to which her portrait was attached, she threw the links around his neck.  Kissing him gently on the forehead, with a gracious smile full of promise, she said to him only, “Au revoir!”

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX.

OLD LOVE—­NEW SORROW.

Elise was in her room.  Her face expressed a quiet, silent resignation, and her large dark eyes had a dreamy but bright look.  She sat in an easy-chair, reading, and whoever had seen her with her high, open forehead and calm looks, would have thought her one of those happy and fortunate beings whom Heaven had blessed with eternal rest and cheerful composure, who was unacquainted with the corroding poison of passionate grief.  No trace of the storm which had raged through her life could be seen on her countenance.  Her grief had eaten inwardly, and only her heart and the spirit of her youth had died; her face had remained young and handsome.  The vigor of her youth had overcome the grief of her spirit, and her cheeks, although colorless and transparent in their paleness, were still free from that sallow, sickly pallor, which is the herald of approaching dissolution.  She was apparently healthy and young, and only sick and cold at heart.  Perhaps she only needed some sunbeams to warm up again her chilled heart, only some gleam of hope to make her soul young again, and strong and ready once more to love and to suffer.  She had never forgotten, never ceased to think of the past, nor of him whom she had loved so unspeakably, whom her soul could not let go.

The memories of the past were the life of the present to her.  The tree in the garden which he had admired, the flowers he had loved and which since then had four times renewed their bloom, the rustling of the fir-trees which sounded from the wall, all spoke of him, and caused her heart to beat, she knew not whether with anger or with pain.  Even now, as she sat in her room, her thoughts and fancies were busy with him.  She had been reading, but the book dropped from her hand.  From the love-scenes which were described in it her thoughts roamed far and wide, and awakened the dreams and hopes of the past.