“My life witnesses to that,” returned Henri, almost losing his self-control. After a pause he resumed: “Before I left Tobolsk, I met an Englishman who had seen his physician, Dr. Wylie, and heard from his lips a full account of every particular. He told me all. And this, indeed, is what has brought me here.”
“It was so good of you to come,” said Clémence tearfully.
“He was looking ill when we parted,” Ivan said. “Ill and worn. But he was so strong, and only forty-three. I never dreamed of death for him—never once.”
Henri answered sadly: “During the years that passed since then, those who loved him have thought of it often—have sometimes almost wished”—but his voice failed; to end that sentence was beyond his power. After a pause he resumed: “Repeated attacks of erysipelas wore out his strength,—especially one, desperately severe, two years before the end. He never fully recovered from its effects. His nerves were shattered; sleep forsook him; he could not bear light or noise, even the taper which burned all day on his table to seal his never-ending despatches, had to be carefully shaded. Still he toiled on, rising sometimes as early as half-past three, and allowing himself no time for rest, except such as he could snatch in his rapid journeys, often over rough roads and in bad vehicles. One who had a post in his household,[82] said to my English friend, ‘After two or three days passed in a carriage the uncrowned traveller gives himself up to rest and refreshment, but the Emperor relaxes himself from one fatigue by another. A regiment is reviewed, government officials received, military colonies visited, an establishment created, plans examined, and so forth. Sleep and food have great trouble to glide into the leisure of so busy a life.’ Yet, after all, it is not toil which usually strikes at the roots of a strong man’s life. Nor is bodily suffering the hardest thing to endure. ‘The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?’ Again to use words other than my own, and all too sadly true, ‘He saw his noble desires abandoned to ridicule, and those to whom he devoted himself rewarded him with ingratitude; until at last the silent but unceasing struggle he had to maintain against those who pretended to second him only to paralyze his action, and to enter into his views only that they might the better betray them, filled his days with bitterness, and eventually shortened their course.’”[83]
“Ah!” said Ivan with a shuddering sigh that was more than half a groan of pain.
“The shadows fell ever dark and darker over that grand, silent, solitary life—how dark those who stood outside could only guess,” Henri went on. “He bore his burden alone. Now and then a few sad words falling from his lips almost unawares, or perhaps a look, showed what was passing within. Once a valued friend, a lady, asked of him a favour which in justice to others he could not grant. He couched his refusal, as he was wont to do, in terms so gentle that she was greatly touched; and when they parted she expressed her earnest wishes for his happiness. At the word ‘happiness’ a change passed over his face, and he turned away with a sorrowful gesture. In one of his rapid journeys, his favourite aide-de-camp, Volkonski, was his companion. The road was bad; and in ascending a steep hill the carriage stopped, the horses being unable to draw it. Instead of awakening Volkonski, who had fallen asleep, the Emperor himself got out and gave the coachman the necessary assistance, helping to push the carriage up the hill. As he resumed his place, Volkonski awoke. ‘Ah, sire, why did you not call me?’ he said. ‘It is all right,’ returned the Czar. ‘You were asleep, and sleep is too precious to be disturbed,’—adding in a lower tone, as if to himself, ‘It brings forgetfulness.’”
“How like him!” said Clémence.
“Too sadly like him,” resumed Henri. “It was all Alexander—the unselfishness, the profound melancholy, the reserve that only betrayed it unconsciously in taking thought for another. But I suppose the most direct disclosure he ever made was in a few words spoken to an old and intimate friend who asked about his health. ‘In body, I am well,’ he answered; ‘but in mind I suffer always, and my suffering is the greater because I cannot speak of it.’”
There was a pause. Clémence bent down over the fair head of her little son to hide the tears which were dropping slowly. “My child had better go to his rest,” she said.
The child’s eager face was upturned, and the request to stay was on his trembling lips, when Ivan interposed. “No,” he said. “Let him hear all, Clémence. He has the right.—But, Henri, was there no one near to ask whence all this anguish and sorrow of heart?”