where the
pettiness, the rigidity and the absurdity of things were manifest to
others besides Peggy Kirkpatrick. She had hectored over grand dukes,
had flouted their mistresses, gibed at their prime ministers, and
argued with their ecclesiastics. All this would have been easily
checked in an ordinary woman; but Madame the Countess Riano del
Valdozo y Kirkpatrick, with a vast fortune, with a powerful backing at
the courts of France and Spain--for she never lacked friends--was a
considerable person, and as Francezka told us, with dancing eyes,
Madame Riano had made good her promise never to leave any place until
she was ready.

When the fire was dying to a bed of coals, Francezka rose to leave us.
She thanked me with tears in her eyes for coming after her; stipulated
that Schnelling must give up her clothes--I believe she would have
lived and died in that forest if she could not have got her garments
and her laced hat--and then, making us a curtsy, as if she were in her
aunt's great saloon at Paris, retired to her bed of boughs. Then I had
some supper. Gaston Cheverny, wrapping himself in his cloak, lay down
at Francezka's feet. I slept, sitting with my back against the trunk
of a tree; and though I had marched long and hard that day, I envied
the two their quiet and unbroken slumber from then until daylight
came.

We were up with the lark. The flush of dawn was in the pearly sky, but
under the thick black fir trees all was darkly shadowed still. We went
in search of Schnelling, who was already stirring. I had meant to ask
him civilly for Mademoiselle Capello's clothes, but this is the way
Gaston Cheverny, with the hot blood of twenty, went about getting
them:

"Schnelling," he said, "give us Mademoiselle Capello's clothes."

"Or what?" asked Schnelling laughing.

"There are two of us who will have your heart's blood!"

Schnelling, to my surprise, laughed again, and chose to accede to the
request with mock humility; but no doubt he saw that it was actually
the part of wisdom to give them up. Gaston Cheverny told me afterward
that when he took the clothes to Francezka she was overjoyed, and only
consented to wear her masculine attire after his representing to her
that she would tear her skirts to shreds in our march to Uzmaiz.

I was taken to Colonel Pintsch, who reiterated to me his story about
being a part of Bibikoff's force, which was a lie on the face of it,
and a Courland lie at that. And then, some breakfas