"True!" said Ghedimin. "The people do not understand our views. We ought to have begun by teaching them what is freedom."
"We must begin by freeing the people from their tyrants," broke in Jakuskin, "then they will soon learn the meaning of freedom."
War was declared. The conspirators, going back to their regiments, took possession, with their mutinous troops, of the square in front of the Winter Palace in the mist of early morning. Their watchword was "Derevaski daloi" (throw away your touchwood). In ordinary gun practice touchwood was used. Now all hastened to change this for steel and flint. Then came the cry, "Hurrah, Constantine!" Only Constantine then; and no word of freedom? But that had been provided for. The mutinous soldiers set up the shout, "Long live the Constitution!" They had been made to believe that "Constitucia" was the wife of Grand Duke Constantine, and thus waxed enthusiastic for freedom as the Czar's wife.
Freedom itself lay deep, deep under the snow like a buried acorn, needing the rays of the sun to awaken it to vitality. On the morning of his accession, the first day of his rule, the Czar was greeted by the tumult of a revolution. They were the household troops, the crack regiments, that rose against him. Their hurrahs resounded from Czar Peter's Platz to the Winter Palace, which Nicholas had exchanged for the little, quiet, old-fashioned Anikof Palace, where he formerly resided. Pale with terror, his generals rushed up to tell him of the danger of the rebellion. Nicholas had seen one like it before, five-and-twenty years ago. Then, a little boy, he was sleeping peacefully in his bed, when his mother, suddenly rushing into the room, snatched him up in her arms, and ran the length of the dark apartments crying for help. One of the doors she was passing opened, and a pale man emerged from it. From a neighboring room came the sounds of a furious struggle—some one within was fighting for his life. That some one was his father. The pale man, Count Pahlen, tore the mother and her trembling burden away from the scene of terror. This episode Nicholas had never forgotten. He, too, now had a little son, still slumbering in his bed. And he, too, snatching up the child in his arms, dashed with it down the stairs of the palace. But before handing over his son to the soldiers he took his wife into the chapel. There, kneeling side by side, they swore to die in a manner worthy of rulers of the empire. That moment of terror gave the Czarina a palsied movement of the head which she never lost in after-life. Then the Czar, taking his son up in his arms, went out with him into the courtyard. The battalion on guard at the Winter Palace chanced to be of a Finnish regiment. Kalevaines, despised as Tschuds by the Suomalai tribes—they were no Russians—what interest had they in Rurik's empire?
The new Czar, going up to them, his son in his arms, tore open his uniform, and, presenting his bare breast to the bayonets, said:
"If you have cause against me, fire at my defenceless breast!"
And Pushkin was right.
The feeling of humanity is stronger than the thirst for freedom. It protects the serf when the Czar persecutes him, and protects the Czar when persecuted by the serf.
"Fear not. We will protect you!" cried Zeneida's countrymen.
"Then to you I intrust my child; take care of him. If I fall, he is your future Czar." And he threw his pale little successor, Alexander II., into the arms of the most heavily oppressed of all his subjects.