“I forgive you!” says the Czar.
Forgives them for what?
For being denied the right to petition the throne, for being driven back into serfdom, for being hacked and slashed and trampled and bullet-riddled by the hireling savages of a barbarian government!
“As the Great Father above forgives, so I, your Little Father, forgives.”
Amen. Let the whimpering wretch who nurses a saber-slashed head recover in peace. He is pardoned for having been Cossacked.
Let the father who drags his lifeless daughter from under the hoofs of the warhorse go weep over her in comfort—he and she are forgiven for having dared to hope for mercy from the Czar.
And the nameless dead who went forth that Sabbath morning, following the heroic priest whose baton was the Cross of Christ—went forth in the glow of lofty purpose and pathetic hope, and whose bodies are now feeding the fishes of the Neva—let them also rest in peace—their Little Father has forgiven them.
“How do I know that you have not injured my horses?” asked Dickens’s Marquis, while the frantic peasant was lamenting his crushed child.
“Let the woman come to my house; she shall be paid. Drive on, coachman,” said the Duke of Béthune.