“His position is a difficult one,” said Emile.
“Difficult?” Ivan repeated with a heavy sigh. “Would it were only difficult! Sometimes it seems to me as if his way were so hedged about that it is impossible for him to do anything at all. First look abroad, upon the perplexed field of European politics. There his unceasing efforts to maintain the peace of the world have already cost him dear. While he endeavours with the one hand to repress the spirit of lawlessness and anarchy, he is trying with the other to move the ‘powers that be’ in the direction of justice, mercy, and moderation; and consequently he is misunderstood by both. Liberals revile him as a friend of tyrants, a renegade from the cause of freedom; princes accuse him of opening the flood-gates before the torrent of democracy, and say he has none but himself to thank if his own dominions are overwhelmed. Then look at home. There is raging the conflict of religious opinion; Photi, Seraphim, and zealots of their type, are for ever besieging his ear with the accusation that his own hands have undermined the Church of his country by giving his people the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and the education necessary to read them. There are going forward the plots and intrigues of the active, unscrupulous secret societies: if he tolerates these as the pardonable follies of harmless enthusiasts, he may be as one who stands idly watching the conflagration which will consume his own dwelling; if he allows Aratchaief and Miloradovitch to repress them with rigour, he will assuredly be execrated as a despot. Nor do his difficulties end here. The corruption that has eaten like a canker into every part of the administration of this enormous empire is the worst and sorest of them all. We are still but half civilized. Great as are the strides we have made, and are making, in the path of improvement, the faults of semi-barbarism cling to us yet. In the reign of the Empress Catherine everything was bought and sold, as too many things are even now—in bitter shame and sorrow I say it. ‘That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up.’ When these things reach the ear of the Czar, he visits them with swift, sharp punishment; and so men begin to call stern, hard, and suspicious the tenderest hearted man that ever walked God’s earth. Yet he cannot stay the evil.”
“God help him!” said Emile.
“Amen,” responded Ivan. He seemed about to add something more; but with a look of sadness very foreign to his bright young face he checked himself, and kept silence.
“When did you see him last?” asked Emile.
“I saw him to-day,” said Ivan briefly. There the conversation ended: Ivan shortly afterwards accompanied his friend to his apartment, bade him a cordial good-night, and then went at once to the dressing-room, where Clémence was awaiting him, and reading meanwhile the letters Emile had given her.
The accounts of Stéphanie were particularly interesting to her. How the approbation of that young lady’s guardian had ever been obtained by a suitor who had so small a portion of this world’s goods to offer as Henri de Talmont, was certainly a mystery. The letters only solved it indirectly. That of Madame de Talmont was the most satisfactory. She observed that the will of Stéphanie’s guardian was very weak, while that of Stéphanie herself was remarkably strong. When M. de Galmar informed her of Henri’s proposal, adding, as a matter of course, that he would decline it for her, she was far too decorous and well-bred to make the smallest objection; but she told him very quietly that she had often thought of embracing a religious life, and that as her friend Madame de Krudener was now about to found a missionary community—she believed among the Tartars on the Danube—she wished to signify her intention of joining it as soon as she came of age. “Your cousin is a strange girl,” M. de Galmar observed afterwards to his daughter Coralie. “But, after all, a Protestant is not as bad as a Tartar. Nor is dining upon three courses, instead of twelve, quite as bad as being dined upon oneself by cannibals in some of those savage countries. She had better take the young architect.”
Clémence looked up from her letter with an air of amusement, which changed into one of grave anxiety as she saw the serious face of Ivan bending over her. She drew a chair for him near the fire, and said, “I am longing to hear all, Ivan. Why did the Czar send for you? How did you find him?”
Ivan answered the last question first: “Looking depressed and weary, and his deafness more apparent than ever. I had to sit quite close to him, and to raise my voice to make him hear. He spoke very mournfully of the state of things in Siberia, whence the Governor-General, Speranski, has just returned, bringing sad accounts of the prevalence of corruption and dishonesty in the public service. For the present the vigorous measures of Speranski have checked these evils, though at the expense of removing the governor from every province save one. He has sent these unfaithful governors here for their trial; and most of them will probably be sent back to Siberia as convicts. But now his own health has broken down, and he is obliged to quit his post. There is need—great need—of faithful and active men to continue and carry out the reforms he has begun.”
Here Ivan paused, took the hand of Clémence in his, and with a look full of tenderness continued his narrative—“The Czar said to me sadly, ‘There are so few that I can trust. Will you help me in this thing, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch?’”