Frightened by his despair, my mother dared not weep before him, and endeavoured to give him courage by talking of the uncertainty and injustice of the verdict.  But my father was inconsolable.

Marya was more miserable than anyone.  Fully persuaded that I could have justified myself had I chosen, she suspected the motive which had kept me silent, and deemed herself the sole cause of my misfortune.  She hid from all eyes her tears and her suffering, but never ceased thinking how she could save me.

One evening, seated on the sofa, my father was turning over the Court Calendar; but his thoughts were far away, and the book did not produce its usual effect on him.  He was whistling an old march.  My mother was silently knitting, and her tears were dropping from time to time on her work.  Marya, who was working in the same room, all at once informed my parents that she was obliged to start for Petersburg, and begged them to give her the means to do so.

My mother was much affected by this declaration.

“Why,” said she, “do you want to go to Petersburg?  You, too—­do you also wish to forsake us?”

Marya made answer that her fate depended on the journey, and that she was going to seek help and countenance from people high in favour, as the daughter of a man who had fallen victim to his fidelity.

My father bowed his head.  Each word which reminded him of the alleged crime of his son was to him a keen reproach.

“Go,” he said at last, with a sigh; “we do not wish to cast any obstacles between you and happiness.  May God grant you an honest man as a husband, and not a disgraced and convicted traitor.”

He rose and left the room.

Left alone with my mother, Marya confided to her part of her plans.  My mother kissed her with tears, and prayed God would grant her success.

A few days afterwards Marya set forth with Palashka and her faithful Saveliitch, who, necessarily, parted from me, consoled himself by remembering he was serving my betrothed.

Marya arrived safely at Sofia, and, learning that the court at this time was at the summer palace of Tzarskoe-Selo, she resolved to stop there.  In the post-house she obtained a little dressing-room behind a partition.

The wife of the postmaster came at once to gossip with her, and announced to her pompously that she was the niece of a stove-warmer attached to the Palace, and, in a word, put her up to all the mysteries of the Palace.  She told her at what hour the Tzarina rose, had her coffee, went to walk; what high lords there were about her, what she had deigned to say the evening before at table, who she received in the evening, and, in a word, the conversation of Anna Vlassiefna[73] might have been a leaf from any memoir of the day, and would be invaluable now.  Marya Ivanofna heard her with great attention.

They went together to the Imperial Gardens, where Anna Vlassiefna told Marya the history of every walk and each little bridge.  Both then returned home, charmed with one another.