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I roused you from sleep, Prince? However, I come direct from the Kremlin; and his Majesty commands an audience of you at half-past noon. He is here ex-officio, of course, with only Alderberg, Zelanoi, and ourselves, on the matter of the forestry ukase. But about you there's another matter he wants you for: the petition for the families of convict-exiles to follow them to Siberia.
For the guest from the Kremlin was not the Czar, but the Czar's most detested envoy: the notorious Count Alderberg, Minister of the Imperial Household. And his words to the host and hostess began with the infuriating, formal: "I regret " Even through that moment of greeting, Princess Sophia scarcely understood the full significance of this presence.
Yet never, perhaps, had such a concentrated mixture of defeat, rage, and rebellion glared from those eyes or straightened that heavy mouth. Now, indeed, she knew that they were undone. "Alderberg! Alderberg!
I have made the acquaintance of a number of interesting men; that is, I have been presented to them: Prince Gortschakoff, Lueders, Berg, and Osten-Sacken, who commanded in the last war; Orloff, Mentschikoff, Alderberg, Liewen, the Governor of Siberia, and the commandant of the Caucasus; then a lot of aides-de-camp, the foreign princes, and their suites.
On their heels hastened the Apúkhtin, who played the few seconds of farce with angry hauteur. Then, injury to insult, Alderberg himself approached, having been in the rooms a bare five minutes. And, as he disappeared into the royal alcove, the throng in the rooms began to fly the house as from a spot plague-smitten.
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