"The Czar is living behind a Wall of China. He has never visited a 'duma' (city council), never a zemstvo (district council), never a village, never an industrial centre. He is kept by the camarilla in constant dread, and is so closely watched that he sees not a finger's-breadth of heaven, much less of earth. He rejoices when an occasional quarrel breaks out among the ministers, for he then has the opportunity to learn here and there a fragment of truth."
"And does no one succeed in representing to him conditions as they are?"
"I will make a confession to you. Not very long ago I myself prepared a paper, not bearing my name—that would have offered certain difficulties—but anonymous, and had it transmitted to the Czar by a trustworthy person. For eight days there was great joy at the court. The Emperor and the Empress were delighted to know where the trouble lay and how it was to be remedied. Then the whole matter, as it were, vanished and was forgotten."
"Then that already is pathological."
A shrug of the shoulders was his answer. "Above all things there is the great anxiety and fear at the responsibility. There is also a weakness on account of conscientious scruples. The Emperor knows nothing thoroughly enough to enable him to overcome the arguments of a skilled sophist, and he is too indulgent to say to one of his counsellors, 'Sir, you are a cheat.' He hears in the reports only praise of somebody, never any censure. For he has a great dread of intrigue, and not without good reason. The atmosphere is a fearful one in the vicinity of every autocrat. The Czar is pathetically well-meaning, and is modesty itself, but he is not the autocrat for an autocracy, who must be equal to his task."
"And what, in your excellency's opinion, should be done to help the country?"
"No more than the rest of the world has already accomplished. Abolition of the police system, security of personal freedom, abolition of the censorship, discontinuance of the persecution of sectarians, who are our best subjects, and—I say the word quietly—a constitution."
"And would the country really be helped thereby?"
"Unconditionally. With these little concessions to-day any political convulsion could be avoided, and the intelligent class freed from its fetters. No one knows what will be offered ten years from now."
"Are there prospects of this concession?"