In the last energies of her despair, she made her way to the enormously thick door which closed this trap of stone, and, applying her lips to the joints, shrieked loudly again and again for succour, and beat wildly and fruitlessly with her tender hands upon its massive planks and iron bolts.
Her brain seemed bursting, for she was suffocating as the air lessened. She thought she saw a red light shining through the crannies of the doorway; but whether this were fancy or reality, it was impossible to say, as a faintness came over her, and she sank down choking and drowning in the dark flood that rose within the walls and against the door of the prison.
Heavy and sad was the heart of Charlie Balgonie when, on the evening of the 16th September, that which was subsequent to the episode at Schlusselburg, he saw the domes and towers of St. Petersburg glittering in gold and bronze, in green and fiery or fantastic colours, amid the rich glow of a ruddy sunset; and where rising from the haze of the vast city, the polished cupola of St. Isaac's Cathedral, and the slender spire of the Admiralty, like a needle of flame, seemed to float in mid air.
As he entered the first guarded barrier, he met a party of Lancers riding at a trot, their tall fur caps having scarlet kalpecs and large plumes, their lances, each with a long bannerole of the same colour, waving in the wind. They escorted a covered kabitka, or waggon, and were led by the Count de Balmain, a Scottish officer, who, in after years, stormed Kaffa, in the Crimea.
"For Schlusselburg--the place of sorrow."
"Yes, I regret to say, with the niece of Count Mierowitz, with Mademoiselle Mariolizza. She is to be confined under a warrant from the Grand Chancellor--poor girl!"
Sadder and heavier grew the honest heart of Balgonie, as the escort and its hearse-like carriage passed on; and, as he looked after it, the fair merry face, the full and voluptuous figure, the gay manner, and remarkable _finesse d'esprit_ of the betrothed of poor Basil, as he had last seen her at Louga, came back vividly to memory now.
Balgonie was at St. Petersburg when Mierowitz was executed, and when other horrors followed. Moreover, he was closely and repeatedly interrogated by the Grand Chancellor, the Privy Councillor, Count Panim, by Count Orloff (the present lover of the Empress), and by General Weymarn, as to all he knew and had seen of the conspirators--so closely, that nothing surprised him so much as to find that no suspicion was attached to himself. But being a soldier of fortune, who possessed nothing in the world but his sword and his epaulettes, he was not worth suspecting by the Imperial Government.