I have set down this narrative of events as I lived and knew them, and have kept nothing from you, that you may judge of things, not as we look for them, but as an unromantic destiny determines that they shall be.
I say that I awoke with a start, believing myself to be upon a horse and at the very threshold of the Russian camp. Depict my astonishment when, opening my eyes, I beheld again madame's salle à manger, the tables spread with meat and drink, the forms of the intoxicated Russians on the floor all about me, and above them the red coats of our own Hussars of the Guard! For an instant I believed that the witch in ermine had cast a spell upon me, and that this was but a vision of her enchantment. Then the merry laughter of my own comrades disillusioned me and I staggered, dizzy and dumbfounded, to my feet.
"Name of a dog," I cried to them, "and what does this mean?"
They answered me with a merriment which became a shout.
"It means that the liquor was very good and that you got very drunk," says their captain, clapping me on the shoulder ... and at him I stared all bewildered.
"Drunk!" I cried. "You say that I was drunk!"
"Undoubtedly.... His Majesty told us to take care of you...."
"Then he is not here?" I exclaimed in wonder.
"He is already six leagues on the road to Wilna," was the answer. A child might have put me over at that. I clapped my hands to my fevered brow and began to believe them. Drunk I had been ... but by drink had I saved the Emperor's life.
And I had done him an injustice in my dream. He has not forgotten, as I knew full well.
You will see how it all happened, and will need no further words from me.
Taking the Cossacks down to madame's salle à manger to keep them from the Emperor, I also had been overpowered by their cursed liquor, and had fallen under the table with the rest of them. There I dreamed of Russian camps, and France, and death, and all the nonsense of it, and there I awoke to find our own Red Hussars in possession of the dwelling. How they laughed at me! Yet what music their laughter proved to be!
As to old Madame Zchekofsky, I veritably believe that she played a double part that night with all a woman's cunning. Desiring the Emperor's friendship, she encouraged his belief in her daughter's power of prophecy, at the same time trying to keep in with the Russians by informing them of our presence in the house at a moment when she believed we would already have left it. Thus her anxiety and that disquiet I had observed with such misgiving.