“I know what I should like to do with him if I dared,” he said, with a graceful smile.  “There is a friend of mine not a hundred miles away from that very Kiev who wants a little admonition.  Her name is Petrovna, she is the jail-matron of a female penitentiary; she is just a little too fierce at times.  Murderers, thieves, prostitutes:  oh yes, she can be civil enough to them; but let a political prisoner come near her—­one of her own sex, mind—­and she becomes a devil, a tigress, a vampire.  Ah, Madame Petrovna and I may have a little reckoning some day.  I have asked Lind again and again to petition for a decree against her; but no, he will not move; he is becoming Anglicized, effeminate.”

“A decree?” Brand said.

The other smiled, with an affectation of calm superiority.

“You will learn by-and-by.  Meanwhile, if I dared, what I should like to do would be to give our friend here plenty of money, and not one but two knives, saying to him.  ’My good friend, here is one knife for Michaieloff, if you like; but first of all here is this knife for that angel in disguise, Madame Petrovna, of the Female Penitentiary in Novolevsk.  Strike sure and hard!’”

For one instant his affectation forsook him, and there was a gleam in his eyes.  This was but a momentary relapse from his professed indifference.

“Well, Mr. Brand, I suppose I must take over this madman from you.  You may tell Miss Lind she need not be frightened.”

“I should not think Miss Lind was in the habit of being frightened,” said Brand, coldly.

“Ah, no; doubtless not.  Well, I shall see that this fellow does not trouble her again.  What fine tidings we had of your work in the North!  You have been a power; you have moved mountains.”

“I have moved John Molyneux,” said Brand, with a laugh, “and in these days that is a more difficult business.”

“Fine news from Spain, too,” said Reitzei, glancing at some letters.  “From Valladolid, Barcelona, Ferrol, Saragossa—­all the same story:  coalition, coalition.  Salmero will be in London next week.”

“But you have not told me what you are going to do with this man yet; you must stow the combustible piece of goods somewhere.  Poor devil, his sufferings have made a pitiable object of him.”

“My dear friend,” said Reitzei, “You don’t suppose that a Russian peasant would feel so deeply a beating with whips, or the worrying of dogs, or even the loss of his wife?  Of course, all together, it was something of a hard grind.  He must have been constitutionally insane, and that woke the whole thing up.”

“Then he should be confined.  He is a lunatic at large.”

“I don’t think he would harm anybody,” Reitzei said, regarding the man as if he were a strange animal.  “I would not shut up a dog in a lunatic asylum; I would rather put a bullet through his head.  And this fellow—­if we could humbug him a little, and get him to his work again—­I know a man in Wardour Street who would do that for me—­and see what effect the amassing of a little English money might have on him.  Better a miser than a wild beast.  And he seems a submissive sort of creature.  Leave him to me, Mr. Brand.”