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Now that Peter was disposed of, her only dread consisted in the chance of Ivan's escape; so his guards were doubled, and her orders to Bernikoff concerning him were to ensure his detention even by death if necessary: and it was concerning this very dread that Captain Charles Balgonie was proceeding with a dispatch from Novgorod, where Catharine, with some of her favourites and courtiers, was residing for a time in the ancient palace of the Czars.

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Corporal Podatchkine was an admirable specimen of his own type of Russian,—one who was more afraid of neglecting Lent than of murdering his fellow-being, especially if that fellow-being was a foreigner; "for," saith M. L'Abbé Chappe at this time, "they do not reckon foreigners among the number of their brethren."

His thick black scrubby hair was cut straight across the forehead in a line with the eyebrows, and at each side it hung perpendicularly down below the ears, in the old Russian and Mediæval fashion, and was, moreover, cut square across the neck behind, just as the English wore theirs in the days of Richard III.; and he kept alternately scratching and smoothing his rugged front, nervously and assiduously, when he removed his fur Cossack cap; and, full of affected concern, even to exhibiting tears in his small cunning eyes, presented himself, through the bribed auspices of the dvornick, to Natalie Mierowna next morning, and besought her to have him "conducted to the chamber of his brave, his beloved Captain, his comrade and brother, who was, he now learned, seriously ill, helpless, and delirious,"—and, in fact, just as the cunning Corporal wished him to be.