The emperor's candlesticks

Gay, chic Vienna was _en fête_. What would you? Shrove Tuesday is the very last day, allowed by our Holy Mother the Church for revelry, before the long austere forty days of Len...

All this had excited little or no attention among the bystanders. How should it? An opera ball teems with such episodes. Two young people, one in pursuit of the other--a signal-...

As soon as Iván Volenski lost sight completely of Madame Demidoff’s carriage, he, with a sigh of relief, retraced his steps up the wide stairs of the opera house, and joined a c...

Suspect? Bah! anybody might at any moment become “suspect” to the Russian police. And then,… that anybody’s name is placed on the list.… After that let him try to get across wit...

“And must your Eminence really leave us to-morrow?” said the Emperor Franz Jozef I., with polite regret, as Cardinal d’Orsay, Papal Nuncio accredited to the court of Vienna, pre...

It had already been settled, some little time ago, that his Eminence Cardinal d’Orsay would leave Vienna on the day following--Thursday--to take two or three weeks’ relaxation f...

That same night his Eminence, as he had told Iván, was not dining at his hotel: he was spending an evening--the last of a series--in the company of Madame Demidoff, the most cha...

Whoever has travelled in a first-class carriage of an Austrian State railway has learnt to know the acme of comfort and luxury that can be conveyed on wheels. True, that whilst...

In the meanwhile Iván Volenski had suffered terribly. His was a peculiar position at that moment. Anxious as he had been to serve the great cause, he had imperilled it--unwittin...

It was in a narrow street, in one of the most squalid quarters of Vienna, that the _fiaker_ stopped, after some ten minutes’ rattle over the cobbled streets of the city.

Poor Volenski had begun to look very haggard and careworn; the mental strain of the past few days was beginning to tell upon him. He was paying less attention to his dress, ther...

How Iván ever reached home that night, without being arrested by the police on suspicion of being drunk, he never afterwards could say. He remembered nothing after the time when...

On arriving at his hotel Volenski found a telegram from Baron de Hermansthal, asking for his immediate presence at the detective office. Wishing to avoid anything that might in...

While their comrade was undergoing the various vicissitudes, into which his overanxious zeal had led him, the members of the Socialist brotherhood in Vienna had been going throu...

Maria Stefanowna’s position in the great Socialist brotherhood was a curious one. The only woman among so many men, she yet knew all their secrets and plans, and, though young,...

It had been a weary, an anxious time of waiting for Count Lavrovski, while forced to sit patiently at the hotel, watching for news of the truant, and sending reports of the Tsar...

Once out in the streets Maria Stefanowna breathed freely again, and lifted the heavy veil from her face. She was not afraid of being followed, for she well knew that in one thin...

It was about a week later, that Nicholas Alexandrovitch, wearied by long captivity, was surprised late one evening to find on his supper-table a neatly folded silk handkerchief,...

“Messrs. Phillips and Phillips will sell on the premises the whole of the contents of the superb mansion known as 108, Curzon Street, Mayfair, consisting of antique and modern f...

A number of dealers, mostly Jews, who all seemed to know each other, were quietly arranging among themselves as to which particular lot they each intended to purchase. The sale...

“We are in each other’s power. Obviously it would not answer either of our purposes to fight out this duel. Shall we exchange our _pièces de conviction_, monsieur, to-night at m...

And that night, in one of the daintily furnished sitting-rooms of Claridge’s Hotel, before a gaily blazing fire, a man and a woman sat discussing their late mutual adventures ov...