ing disturbed and
at the same time curious as to what her parents were doing, she got up,
went to listen at the door, and heard all.

The day for the Communion came; the church of St. Simeon was crowded.
Vaninka came to kneel at the railing of the choir. Behind her was her
father and his aides-de-camp, and behind them their servants.

Arina was also in the church with her mother. The inquisitive child
wished to see Vaninka, whose name she had heard pronounced that terrible
night, when her father had failed in the first and most sacred of the
duties imposed on a priest. While her mother was praying, she left her
chair and glided among the worshippers, nearly as far as the railing.

But when she had arrived there, she was stopped by the group of the
general's servants. But Arina had not come so far to be, stopped so
easily: she tried to push between them, but they opposed her; she
persisted, and one of them pushed her roughly back. The child fell,
struck her head against a seat, and got up bleeding and crying, "You are
very proud for a slave. Is it because you belong to the great lady who
burnt the Red House?"

These words, uttered in a loud voice, in the midst of the silence which
preceded, the sacred ceremony, were heard by everyone. They were
answered by a shriek. Vaninka had fainted. The next day the general, at
the feet of Paul, recounted to him, as his sovereign and judge, the whole
terrible story, which Vaninka, crushed by her long struggle, had at last
revealed to him, at night, after the scene in the church.

The emperor remained for a moment in thought at the end of this strange
confession; then, getting up from the chair where he had been sitting
while the miserable father told his story, he went to a bureau, and wrote
on a sheet of paper the following sentence:

"The priest having violated what should have been inviolable, the secrets
of the confessional, is exiled to Siberia and deprived of his priestly
office. His wife will follow him: she is to be blamed for not having
respected his character as a minister of the altar. The little girl will
not leave her parents.

"Annouschka, the attendant, will also go to Siberia for not having made
known to her master his daughter's conduct.

"I preserve all my esteem for the general, and I mourn with him for the
deadly blow which has struck him.

"As for Vaninka, I know of no punishment which can be inflicted upon her.
I only see in her the daughter