acquaintance with the usurper, from the meeting in the snowdrift
to the taking of Belogorsk, where he gave me my life through gratitude.
I was going to continue my defense, by relating frankly my relations
with Marie, and her rescue. But if I spoke of her the Commission would
force her to appear, and her name would become the theme of no very
delicate remarks by the interrogated witnesses. These thoughts so
troubled me that I stammered, and at last was silent.

The judges were prejudiced against me by my evident confusion. The young
Guardsman asked that I should be confronted by my chief accuser. Some
minutes later the clank of iron fetters resounded, and Alexis entered.

He was pale and thin. His hair, formerly black as a raven's wing, was
turning gray. He repeated his accusation in a weak but decided tone.

According to him, I was Pougatcheff's spy. I heard him to the end in
silence, and rejoiced at one thing: he never pronounced the name of
Marie Mironoff. Was it that his self-love smarted from her contemptuous
rejection of him? or was there in his heart a spark of that same
feeling which made me also silent on that point? This confirmed me in
my resolution, and when asked what I had to answer to the charges of
Alexis, I merely said that I held to my first declaration, and had
nothing more to add.

The General remanded us to prison. I looked at Alexis. He smiled with
satisfied hate, raised up his shackles to hasten his pace and pass
before me. I had no further examination. I was not an eye-witness of
what remains to be told the reader; but I have so often heard the story,
that the minutest particulars are engraved on my memory.

Marie was received by my parents with the cordial courtesy which
distinguished the preceding generation. They became very much attached
to her, and my father no longer considered my love a folly. The news of
my arrest was a fearful blow; but Marie and Saveliitch had so frankly
told the origin of my connection with Pougatcheff, that the news did not
seem grave. My father could not be persuaded that I would take part in
an infamous revolt, whose object was the subversion of the throne and
the extinction of the nobility. So better news was expected, and several
weeks passed, when at last a letter came from our relative Prince B---.
After the usual compliments, he told my father that the suspicions of
my complicity in the rebel plots were only too well founded, as had been
proved,--that an e