untess Fanny's permission that he might invite
Captain Kirby to his table; and Countess Fanny (she had the name from
the ballad

'I am the star of Prince and Czar,
My light is shed on many,
But I wait here till my bold Buccaneer
Makes prize of Countess Fanny':--

for the popular imagination was extraordinarily roused by the elopement,
and there were songs and ballads out of number), Countess Fanny
despatched her husband to Captain Kirby again, meaning no harm, though
the poor man is laughed at in the songs for going twice upon his
mission.

None of the mighty people repented of having the Old Buccaneer--for that
night, at all events. He sat in the midst of them, you may believe, like
the lord of that table, with his great white beard and hair--not a lock
of it shed--and his bronze lion-face, and a resolute but a merry eye
that he had. He was no deep drinker of wine, but when he did drink, and
the wine champagne, he drank to show his disdain of its powers; and the
emperor wishing for a narrative of some of his exploits, particularly
the blowing up of his ship, Kirby paid his Majesty the compliment of
giving it him as baldly as an official report to the Admiralty. So
disengaged and calm was he, with his bottles of champagne in him, where
another would have been sparkling and laying on the colours, that he was
then and there offered Admiral's rank in the Imperial navy; and the Old
Buccaneer, like a courtier of our best days, bows to Countess Fanny, and
asks her, if he is a free man to go: and, No, says she, we cannot spare
you! And there was a pretty wrangle between Countess Fanny and the
emperor, each pulling at the Old Buccaneer to have possession of him.

He was rarely out of her sight after their first meeting, and the
ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's family was, she feared he
would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her
husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough
to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think
it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found
him on the grounds of Cressett: 'like vermin,' he said, and it was
considered that he had the right, and no jury would have convicted him.
You know what those days were.

He had his opportunity one moonlight night, not far from the castle, and
peppered Kirby with shot from a fowling-piece at, some say, five paces'
dist