THE CANNSTATT CONSPIRATORS.
Part I. The Czar’s Protégée.
CHAPTER I.
In the autumn of the year 185—, the Institution of Herr Popp in Cannstatt, for the care and cure of spinal diseases, was increased by three individuals of whom it is necessary that we give some account.
I. Paul Jansiewich, a Russian gentleman about seventy-eight, very thin and bowed in person, with bald head covered by a black fur cap, no whiskers, and bright, small eyes. With any strangers, however unobservant they might be, Jansiewich would be set down as a miser—he was not a miser, because he had no money to be miserly over; but his grand-daughter, Alexandrina had money, and though he was on the verge of the grave, and she was a young, blooming girl of seventeen, her money and the hoarding of it were the objects of his life. Except that he never allowed the house windows to be opened, and had an appetite of very large and liberal capacity, with no consideration whatever for appetites more nice or conservative, he cannot be described as an unpleasant person.
II. Alexandrina, commonly called Sasha, his grand-daughter, aged seventeen; fair-haired, pink-cheeked, and rosy-lipped, showing her teeth too much in a smile, otherwise quite pretty. Being light-haired, with that kind of smile and a sparkle or two of steel in her eyes, some readers may begin to imagine for themselves that she will prove of mediocre intellect and stupendous will. Wait and see. Mademoiselle Alexandrina’s papa had been tutor to the great, terrible Czar Nicholas I., and to imperial gratitude she owed the comfortable sum of eight hundred a year, pensioned on her at her father’s death. Without this, she could hardly have afforded to become a patient of Herr Popp’s, however much her very slight spinal deformity might have grieved her friends, and she could hardly have afforded anything so fashionable as an English, or rather Irish, governess, who received a tolerable salary and accompanied her in all her travels. For they were a restless pair, old Paul Jansiewich and his grand-daughter Sasha. One month they would be at Heidelberg, another at Frankfort, the next at Brussels, the next at Ems, and so on. They had now come to Cannstatt, because an accident which happened ten years ago to the young girl’s spine, had lately begun to show itself
