: "_N'oublie pas ton francais, mon
cheri_." In three months, simply by playing with us, she had taught me
not only to speak French, but to read it as well. She was indeed an
excellent playmate. In the distance, half-way down to the great gates, a
light, open trap, harnessed with three horses in Russian fashion, stood
drawn up on one side, with the police captain of the district sitting in
it, the vizor of his flat cap with a red band pulled down over his eyes.

It seems strange that he should have been there to watch our going so
carefully. Without wishing to treat with levity the just timidites of
Imperialists all the world over, I may allow myself the reflection that
a woman, practically condemned by the doctors, and a small boy not quite
six years old, could not be regarded as seriously dangerous, even for
the largest of conceivable empires saddled with the most sacred of
responsibilities. And this good man I believe did not think so, either.

I learned afterward why he was present on that day. I don't remember any
outward signs; but it seems that, about a month before, my mother became
so unwell that there was a doubt whether she could be made fit to
travel in the time. In this uncertainty the Governor-General in Kiev was
petitioned to grant her a fortnight's extension of stay in her brother's
house. No answer whatever was returned to this prayer, but one day at
dusk the police captain of the district drove up to the house and told
my uncle's valet, who ran out to meet him, that he wanted to speak with
the master in private, at once. Very much impressed (he thought it was
going to be an arrest), the servant, "more dead than alive with fright,"
as he related afterward, smuggled him through the big drawing-room,
which was dark (that room was not lighted every evening), on tiptoe, so
as not to attract the attention of the ladies in the house, and led him
by way of the orangery to my uncle's private apartments.

The policeman, without any preliminaries, thrust a paper into my uncle's
hands.

"There. Pray read this. I have no business to show this paper to you. It
is wrong of me. But I can't either eat or sleep with such a job hanging
over me."

That police captain, a native of Great Russia, had been for many years
serving in the district.

My uncle unfolded and read the document. It was a service order issued
from the Governor-General's secretariat, dealing with the matter of the
petition and directing the police