As he passed through the village a murmur of many voices followed him, not quite drowned by the rattle of his wheels, the clatter of the horses’ feet.  The murmur was a curse.  Karl Steinmetz heard it distinctly.  It made him smile with a queer expression beneath his great gray mustache.

The starosta, standing in his door-way, saw the smile.  He raised his voice with his neighbors and cursed.  As Steinmetz passed him he gave a little jerk of the head toward the castle.  The jerk of the head might have been due to an inequality of the road, but it might also convey an appointment.  The keen, haggard face of Michael Roon showed no sign of mutual understanding.  And the carriage rattled on through the stricken village.

Two hours later, when it was quite dark, a closed carriage, with two bright lamps flaring into the night, passed through the village toward the castle at a gallop.

“It is the prince,” the peasants said, crouching in their low door-ways.  “It is the prince.  We know his bells—­they are of silver—­and we shall starve during the winter.  Curse him—­curse him!”

They raised their heads and listened to the galloping feet with the patient, dumb despair which is the curse of the Slavonic race.  Some of them crept to their doors, and, looking up, saw that the castle windows were ablaze with light.  If Paul Howard Alexis was a plain English gentleman in London, he was also a great prince in his country, keeping up a princely state, enjoying the gilded solitude that belongs to the high-born.  His English education had educed a strict sense of discipline, and as in England, and, indeed, all through his life, so in Russia did he attempt to do his duty.

The carriage rattled up to the brilliantly lighted door, which stood open, and within, on either side of the broad entrance-hall, the servants stood to welcome their master.  A strange, picturesque, motley crew:  the majordomo, in his black coat, and beside him the other house-servants—­tall, upright fellows, in their bright livery.  Beyond them the stable-men and keepers, a little army, in red cloth tunics, with wide trousers tucked into high boots, all holding their fur caps in their hands, standing stiffly at attention, clean, honest, and not too intelligent.

The castle of Osterno is built on the lines of many Russian country seats, and not a few palaces in Moscow.  The Royal Palace in the Kremlin is an example.  A broad entrance-hall, at the back of which a staircase as broad stretches up to a gallery, around which the dwelling-rooms are situated.  At the head of the staircase, directly facing the entrance-hall, high folding doors disclose the drawing-room, which is almost a throne room.  All gorgeous, lofty, spacious, as only Russian houses are.  Truly this northern empire, this great white land, is a country in which it is good to be an emperor, a prince, a noble, but not a poor man.

Paul passed through the ranks of his retainers, himself a head taller than the tallest footman, a few inches broader than the sturdiest keeper.  He acknowledged the low bows by a quick nod, and passed up the staircase.  Steinmetz—­in evening dress, wearing the insignia of one or two orders which he had won in the more active days of his earlier diplomatic life—­was waiting for him at the head of the stairs.