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CATHARINE.

Neither, neither. . Some frightful word might drop.. might remind me.. no, nothing shall remind me . . french rather: french songs are the liveliest in the world.

Is the rouge off my face?

DASHKOF.

It is rather in streaks and mottles, excepting just under the eyes, where it sits as it should do.

CATHARINE.

I am heated and thirsty: I cannot imagine how I think we have not yet taken our coffee . . was it so strong? What am I dreaming of? I could eat only a slice of melon at breakfast; my duty urged me then; and dinner is yet to come. Remember, I am to faint at the midst of it, when the intelligence comes in, or rather when, in despite of every effort to conceal it from me, the awful truth has flashed upon my mind. Remember too, you are to catch me, and to cry for help, and to tear those fine flaxen hairs which we laid up together on the toilet, and we are both to be as inconsolable as we can be for the life of us. Not now, child, not now. Come, sing. I know not how to fill up the interval. Two long hours yet! how stupid and tiresome! I wish all things of the sort could be done and be over in a day. They are mightily disagreeable, when by nature

one is not cruel. People little know my character. I have the tenderest heart upon earth: I am courageous, but I am full of weaknesses: I possess in perfection the higher part of men, and, to a friend I may say it, the most amiable part of women. Ho! ho! at last you smile: now your thoughts upon that.

DASH KOF.

I have heard fifty men swear it.

CATHARINE.

They lied, the knaves! I hardly knew them by sight. We were talking of the sad necessity . . . Ivan must follow next: he is heir to the throne. I have a wild, impetuous, pleasant little protégé, who shall attempt to rescue him. I will have him persuaded and incited to it, and assured of pardon on the scaffold. He can never know the trick we play him; unless his head, like a bottle of bordeaux, ripens its faculties in the sawdust. Orders are given that Ivan be despatched at the first disturbance in the precincts of the castle; in short, at the fire of the sentry. . but not now. another time.. two such scenes together, and without some interlude, would perplex people.

I thought we spoke of singing: do not make me wait so, my dearest creature! . . Now cannot you sing as usual, without smoothing your dovesthroat with your hankerchief, and taking off

your necklace? Give it me then; give it me: I will hold it for you: I must play with something. Sing, sing; I am quite impatient*.

* Can we wonder that a set of despots, who have, in unbroken succession, murdered, or instigated the murder of, sons, husbands, wives, fathers, should feel the necessity of reducing the world to slavery and ignorance, of abolishing the use of letters, of extinguishing the enthusiasm of poetry, of hood-winking the glances of fiction, of shutting up the records of history, and of laying one vast iron hand upon the human mouth, covering the lips and nostrils of aggregated nations, fastened and waxed together for the purpose, like the reeds of Pan's pipe?

Of all these autocrates, as they call themselves, the most liberality and the most sincerity were displayed by Catharine.

CONVERSATION VII.

WILLIAM PENN

AND

LORD PETERBOROUGH.

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