There lived in Paris an old man who had once been a freed serf, and
then a confidential private secretary of her father's. He had received
a pension from her family for his faithful and intelligent services,
and the devotion which he had given to her father he had continued to
give to her. He was a man of great humility, though of great sagacity.
He had the patience and submissive temper of the Muscovite peasant
joined to the subtlety and the adroitness of the educated Slav.
Whenever she needed any errand executed in which prudence and ability
were needed, she always sent for this person, whom she had known from
infancy, and who loved and revered her with an almost abject devotion.
Rather than fail to execute the wishes of Nadège Federowna, or fail to
keep the secret of them when fulfilled, he would have died a hundred
times over with that serenity under torture which the Russian of the
Baltic shares with the Asiatic of the Indus.
Of the very existence of this man Othmar knew scarcely anything. It had
always seemed to her well to have some few instruments of which the
position and the species were known only to herself. One is never sure
of the future. It was her manner of keeping '_une poire pour la soif_,'
after the wise injunction of the provincial proverb.
She had never hitherto used the services of Michel Obrenovitch for any
wrongful cause; but she knew that, to whatever purpose she chose to
dedicate him, to that purpose he would be bound.
When she rose in the following forenoon she sent for him, and gave him
the name of Damaris Bérarde and the name of the island of Bonaventure.
'Whatever there can be learnt of this person and this place learn for
me,' she said to him.
He asked no more instructions. He kissed the hem of her gown in sign of
humblest loyalty and good faith, and withdrew.
'He has the grip of a ferret,' she thought, 'and the heart of a dog.'