But, before opening
the door at the head of the stairs, he took time for reflection.
"Hem! perhaps it would have been better for me to have been already
taken ill, for if this plan should miscarry, and the regent discover
that I was in the palace to-day, how then? Ah, I already seem to feel
a draught of Siberian air! But no, it will succeed, and how would that
ambitious Munnich triumph should it succeed without me! No, for this
time I must be present, to the vexation of Munnich, that he may not put
all Russia in his pocket! The good man has such large pockets and such
grasping hands!"
Nodding and smiling to himself, Ostermann opened the door of the
anteroom. A rapid, searching glance satisfied him that he was alone
there, but his brow darkened when he observed Count Munnich's mantle
lying upon a chair.
"Ah, he has preceded me," peevishly murmured Ostermann. "Well, well,
we can afford once more to yield the precedence to him. To-day
he--to-morrow I! My turn will come to-morrow!"
Quite forgetting his illness and his pretended pains, he rapidly crossed
the spacious room, and, throwing his ragged fur cloak upon Munnich's
mantle, said:
"A poor old cloak like this is yet in condition to render that
resplendent uniform invisible.
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