“Are you in earnest?” smilingly asked Anna, drawing her silver toilet-glass nearer to her person, and placing a bouquet of flowers in her hair to examine its effect in the glass.

“Oh, Heavens!” cried Count Ostermann, “you adorn yourself with flowers, while I am telling you that you are threatened with a conspiracy!”

“A conspiracy!” laughed the regent, “and Princess Elizabeth to be at the head of it!  Believe me, you overwise men, with all your wisdom, never learn rightly to understand women.  I, however, am a woman, and I understand Elizabeth.  You think that when she kindly chats with the soldiers, and admits the handsome stately grenadiers into her house, it is done for the purpose of conspiring with them.  Go to, Count Ostermann, you are very innocent.  Princess Elizabeth has but one passion, but it is not the desire of ruling; and when she chats with handsome men, she speaks not of conspiracy, believe me.”  And, laughing, the regent essayed a new head-dress.

“And how do you explain the secret meetings of Lestocq and the Marquis de la Chetardie?” asked Ostermann, with painfully-suppressed agitation.

“Explain?  Why should I seek an explanation for things that do not at all interest me?  What is it to me what the surgeon Lestocq has to do with the constantly-ailing French ambassador?  Or do you think I should trouble myself about the lavements administered to an ambassador by a surgeon?”

“Well, then, your highness will allow me to explain their meetings from a less medical point of view?  France is your enemy, France meditates your destruction, and the Marquis de la Chetardie is exciting the princess and Lestocq to an insurrection.”

“And to what end, if I may be allowed to ask?” scornfully inquired Anna.

“France, struggling with internal and foreign enemies, at war with Austria, involved in disputes with Holland and Spain, France would wish at any price to see the Russian government so occupied with her own domestic difficulties as to have no time to devote to international affairs.  She would provide you with plenty of occupation at home, that you may not actively interfere with the affairs of the rest of the world.  That is the shrewd policy of France, and it would fill me with admiration were it not fraught with the most terrible danger to us.  The Marquis de la Chetardie has it in charge to bring about a revolution here at any price, and as an expert diplomatist, he very well comprehends that Princess Elizabeth is the best means he can employ for that purpose; for she, as the daughter of Czar Peter, has the sympathies of the old Russians in her favor, and they will flock to her with shouts of joy whenever she may announce to the people that she is ready to drive the foreign rulers from Russia!”

“Ah, our good Russians,” laughingly exclaimed the regent, “they shout only for those who make them drunk, and for that the poor princess lacks the means!”