he respectfully pressed it to his
lips.

"And now go, to kiss the hand of the young emperor, that you may not be
accused of disrespect," smilingly added Biron; "one must always preserve
appearances."

Munnich silently bowed, while walking backward toward the door.

"We part as friends?" asked the duke, nodding an adieu.

"As friends for life and death!" said Munnich, with a smile.

But no sooner had the door closed behind him than the smile vanished
from his features, and was replaced by an expression of furious rage.
He threateningly shook his fist toward the door which separated him from
the duke, and with convulsively compressed lips and grating teeth he
said: "Yes, we now part as friends, but we shall yet meet as enemies! I
shall remember this hour, sir duke, and shall do my best to prevent your
forgetting it. Ah, you have not sent me to Siberia, but I will send you
there! And now to the Emperor Ivan. I shall there meet his parents, the
shamefully-slighted Ulrich of Brunswick, and his wife Anna Leopoldowna.
I think they will welcome me."

With a firm step, rage and vengeance in his heart, but outwardly smiling
and submissive, Field-Marshal Count Munnich betook himself to the palace
of the Duke of Brunswick to kiss the hand of the cradled Emperor Ivan.

COUNT OSTERMANN

Four weeks had passed since Biron, Duke of Courland, had commenced his
rule over Russia, as regent, in the name of the infant Emperor Ivan. The
Russian people had with indifference submitted to this new ruler, and
manifested the same subjection to him as to his predecessor. It was all
the same to them whoever sat in godlike splendor upon the magnificent
imperial throne--what care that mass of degraded slaves, who are
crawling in the dust, for the name by which their tyrants are called?
They remain what they are, slaves; and the one upon the throne remains
what he is, their absolute lord and tyrant, who has the right to-day to
scourge them with whips, to-morrow to make them barons and counts, and
perhaps the next day to send them to Siberia, or subject them to the
infliction of the fatal knout. Whoever proclaims himself emperor or
dictator, is greeted by the Russian people, that horde of creeping
slaves, as their lord and master, the supreme disposer of life and
death, while they crawl in the dust at his feet.

They had sworn allegiance to the Regent Biron, as they had to the
Empress Anna; they threw themselves upon the earth when they