"What are you going to do with him?" Brand said.

Reitzei shrugged his shoulders.

"I know what I should like to do with him if I dared," he said, with a
graceful smile. "There is a friend of mine not a hundred miles away from
that very Kiev who wants a little admonition. Her name is Petrovna, she
is the jail-matron of a female penitentiary; she is just a little too
fierce at times. Murderers, thieves, prostitutes: oh yes, she can be
civil enough to them; but let a political prisoner come near her--one of
her own sex, mind--and she becomes a devil, a tigress, a vampire. Ah,
Madame Petrovna and I may have a little reckoning some day. I have asked
Lind again and again to petition for a decree against her; but no, he
will not move; he is becoming Anglicized, effeminate."

"A decree?" Brand said.

The other smiled, with an affectation of calm superiority.

"You will learn by-and-by. Meanwhile, if I dared, what I should like to
do would be to give our friend here plenty of money, and not one but two
knives, saying to him. 'My good friend, here is one knife for
Michaieloff, if you like; but first of all here is this knife for that
angel in disguise, Madame Petrovna, of the Female Penitentiary in
Novolevsk. Strike sure and hard!'"

For one instant his affectation forsook him, and there was a gleam in
his eyes. This was but a momentary relapse from his professed
indifference.