“I know they are,” the Czar answered musingly.
“And the great point is, that with the intelligent classes actively interested in the preservation of law and order, criminal societies of any sort would find themselves without any ground to stand upon.”
The Czar had another cough, and then he said, flushing:
“There is a simpler way to leave them without ground to stand upon, surgical operations or no surgical operations. Call it what you will. There is no sense in pampering them, Melikoff. Why, in western Europe they execute common murderers. As to a gang of assassins like that, death would be regarded a mild punishment.” He lighted a cigarette, but forthwith extinguished it and went on with emphasis: “We handle them with kid gloves, Melikoff. That’s why they take chances.”
He spoke with subdued anger, citing the republican uprising led by aristocratic army officers in 1825, which his father (the man whose portrait was on the right wall) quelled by means of field guns. Loris-Melikoff demurred to the comparison, tactfully hinting that there would be no betrayal of weakness in inviting the public to participate in the extermination of crime by showing it signs of increased imperial confidence, and the Czar softened again. He felt that the Armenian knew how to save him and he willingly submitted to his and Princess Dolgoruki’s influence. But Fate was bent on tragedy.
Alexander II. lacked anything but courage. Still, this continuous living under fire had gradually unnerved him. The soldier on the battlefield finds moral support in the presence of thousands of comrades, all facing the same fate as he; whereas he was like a lone man on top of a dynamite pile. And if his perils were shared by those about him, this only added the agonising consciousness that his person carried the shadow of destruction with it, endangering the life of every living being that came near him. He knew, for example, that when he was at the theatre candles were kept ready, in case the lights were blown out by an explosion; that many people stayed away from the playhouse on such occasions for fear of being destroyed along with their sovereign. His pride would not let him feel low-spirited. He very often forced himself to disdain caution, to act with reckless courage. Nevertheless he had a dreary, jaded look. The notion that he, the most powerful of men, the image of grandeur and human omnipotence, should tremble at every sound, wounded his common human pride acutely. The consequence was that this mightiest monarch in the world, the gigantic man of sixty-two, every bit of him an Emperor, was at heart a terror-stricken infant mutely imploring for help. He continued to appear in the streets of the capital, accompanied by his usual escort and to return the salutes of passers-by with his usual air of majestic ease. Now and then he went to the theatre, and occasionally even beyond the scenes for a flirtation with the actresses. But the public knew that besides his large uniformed escort, his carriage was watched by hordes of detectives in citizen’s clothes, and that every inch of the ground which he was to traverse was all but turned inside out for possible signs of danger. And those who were admitted to his presence knew that underneath his grand, free-and-easy bearing was a sick heart and a crushed spirit. That the enemy was an unknown quantity was one of the sources of his growing disquiet. The organised movement might be very large and it might be ridiculously small, but with a latent half-Nihilist in the heart of every subject. He was beginning to realise at last that he knew his people scarcely better than he did the French or the English. He was anxious to make peace with that invisible enemy of his, provided it did not look as if he did.
He was willing to be deceived, and Loris-Melikoff was about to help him deceive himself. But destiny was against them both. He was an honest man, Loris-Melikoff, serious-minded, public-spirited, one of the few able statesmen Russia ever had; but his path was strewn with thorns.