er father and the Governor the fact of his
pressing need; they were high officials with an inflexible sense of
duty, and did all they could to enforce the law against trading with
foreigners. He was to maintain the fiction of belting the globe, but
admit that he had indulged in a dream of commercial relations--for a
benefit strictly mutual--between neighbors as close as the Spanish and
Russians in America. This would interest them--what would not, on the
edge of the world?--and they would agree to lay the matter, reinforced
by a strong personal plea, before the Viceroy of Mexico; who in turn
would send it to the Cabinet and King at Madrid. Meanwhile, he was to
confide in the priests at the Mission. Not only would their sympathies
be enlisted, but they did much trading under the very nose of the
government. Not for personal gain--they were vowed to a life of
poverty; but for their Indian converts; and as there were twelve
hundred at the Mission of San Francisco, they would wink at many things
condemnable in the abstract. He had engaged to visit them on the
morrow, and he must take presents to tempt their impersonal cupidity,
and invite them to inspect the rest of his wares--which the Governor
would be informed his Excellency had been forced to buy with the Juno
from the Yankee skipper, D'Wolf, and would rid himself of did
opportunity offer.

Rezanov had never received sounder advice, and had promptly accepted
it. Now, as he reflected that it had been given by a girl of sixteen,
he was divided between admiration of her precocity and fear lest she
prove to be too young to keep a secret. Moreover, there were other
considerations.

Rezanov, although in his earlier years he had so far sacrificed his
interests and played into the hands of his enemies, in avoiding the too
embarrassing partiality of Catherine the Great, had nevertheless held a
high place at court by right of birth, and been a man of the world
always; rarely absent from St. Petersburg during the last and least
susceptible part of the imperial courtesan's life, the brief reign of
Paul, and the two years between the accession of Alexander and the
sailing of the Nadeshda. Moreover, there was hardly another court of
importance in Europe with which he was not familiar, and few men had
had a more complete experience of life. And the life of a courtier, a
diplomat, a traveller, noble, wealthy, agreeable to women by divine
right, with active enemies and a hord