CHAPTER XXIX.
A HUNTED MONARCH.
The ministers were reporting to the Czar who had recently returned fromLivadia. They were admitted one at a time. As they sat chatting underbreath in the blue waiting room, with the white reflection of the snowthat was falling outside, upon their faces, these elderly men, whosenames were associated in millions of minds with the notion of infinitedignity and power, looked like a group of anxious petitioners in thevestibule of some official.
An exception was made for Count Loris-Melikoff, who was with the Czarduring the audiences of all his colleagues. The Supreme ExecutiveCommission over which he had presided had been abolished some fourmonths before. Nominally he was now simply in charge of the Departmentof the Interior, but in reality he continued to play the part ofpremier, a position he partly owed to Princess Dolgoruki, the Czar'syoung wife, who set great store by his liberal policy. She was said tobe a woman of a rather progressive turn of mind, but whether she was ornot, her fate hung on the life of her imperial husband and every measurethat was calculated to pacify the Nihilists found a ready advocate inher. Indeed, she and the Count were united by a community of personalinterests; for he had as many enemies at court as she, and his positiondepended upon the life of Alexander II. as much as hers.
The Czar was receiving the ministers in a chamber of moderate size,finished in sombre colours, with engaged columns of malachite,book-cases of ebony and silver, with carvings representing scenes fromRussian history, and a large writing table to match. Statues of bronzeand ivory stood between the book-cases and a striking life-sizewatercolour of Nicholas I. hung on the wall to the right of the Czar'schair. The falling snow outside was like a great impenetrable veilwithout beginning or end, descending from some unknown source anddisappearing into some equally mysterious region. The room, whose highwalls, dismally imposing, were supposed to hold the destinies of ahundred millions of human beings, was filled with lustreless wintrylight. The Emperor, tall, erect, broad-shouldered, the image of easydignity, but pale and with a touch of weariness in his large oval face,wore the undress uniform of a general of infantry. He was sixty-two andhe was beginning to look it. He listened to the ministers withconstrained attention. He showed exaggerated interest in the affairs oftheir respective departments, but they could see that his heart was notin their talk, and with unuttered maledictions for the upstartvice-Emperor, they made short work of their errands. They knew that theInterior Department was the only one that commanded the Czar's interestin those days.
At last the Emperor and his chief adviser were left alone. Both weresilent. Loris-Melikoff was as strikingly oriental of feature asAlexander II. was European. Notwithstanding his splendid military careerand uniform he had the appearance of a sharp-witted scientist ratherthan of a warrior. His swarthy complexion, shrewd oriental eyes andhuge energetic oriental nose, flanked by greyer and longer side-whiskersthan the Czar's, made him look like a representative of some foreignpower.
There was pathos in both. Alexander II. had that passion for life whichcomes to an old man upon marrying a pretty young woman. Yet foreignerswho saw him during this period said that he looked like a hunted man. Asto Count Melikoff, his advance had been so rapid, he was surrounded byso many enemies at court, and the changes by which he was trying to savethe Czar's life and his own power, were beset by so many obstacles, thathe could not help feeling like the peasant of the story who was madeking for one day.
Naturally talkative and genially expansive, the Czar's manner towardpeople who were admitted to his intimacy was one of amiable informality.The chief pathos of his fate sprang from the discrepancy between theCzar and the man in him, between a vindictive ruthlessness born of ablind sense of his autocratic honour and an affectionate, emotionalnature with less grit than pride. Had he been a common mortal he wouldhave made far more friends than enemies.
Count Loris-Melikoff had become accustomed to feel at home in hispresence. At this minute, however, as the Czar was watching the snowflakes, with an air of idle curiosity, the Armenian had an overbearingsense of the distance between them. He knew that the Czar was anxious totalk about the revolutionists and that he hated to do so. His heartcontracted with common human pity, yet in the silence that divided themit came over him that the man in front of him was the Czar, and afeeling of awe seized him like the one he used to experience at sight ofthe Emperor long before he was raised to his present position. Thisfeeling passed, however, the moment the Czar began to speak.
"Well?" he said, with sudden directness. "Anything new about thatMichailoff fellow?" Alexandre Michailoff was the real name of theJanitor.
"Nothing new so far, your Majesty," Loris-Melikoff answeredobsequiously, yet with something like triumph, as if the powerlessnessof the police were only too natural and substantiated his views on thegeneral state of things. "He is one of their chief ringleaders."
"And this has been known all along," the Emperor remarked with sadirony. "Such a thing would be inconceivable in any other capital inEurope."
"Quite so. But I feel that in other countries, the capture of miscreantslike ours would be due less to the efficiency of the police than to thecordial cooperation of the public. The trouble is that our police isthrown on its own resources, Sire. It is practically fighting thosewretches single-handed."
The Czar had a fit of coughing, the result of asthma. When it hadsubsided, he said with an air of suffering:
"Well, that's your theory. But then their public is not ours. Theaverage Russian is not wide-awake enough to cooperate with theauthorities." He had in mind his own address at Moscow in which he hadappealed to the community at large for this very assistance in ferretingout sedition. The Will of the People had come into existence since then.
"Still, if our public were drawn into active cooperation with theGovernment, if it became habituated to a sense of the monarch'sconfidence in itself, it seems reasonable to suppose that the indolenceof the community would then disappear. No people is capable of greaterloyalty to the throne than your Majesty's. All that is needed is tolend to this devotion tangibility. This and this alone would enable yourMajesty to cure the evil. What the body politic needs is judiciousinternal treatment. Surgical operations have proven futile. These are mysincerest convictions, your Majesty."
"I know they are," the Czar answered musingly.
"And the great point is, that with the intelligent classes activelyinterested in the preservation of law and order, criminal societies ofany sort would find themselves without any ground to stand upon."
The Czar had another cough, and then he said, flushing:
"There is a simpler way to leave them without ground to stand upon,surgical operations or no surgical operations. Call it what you will.There is no sense in pampering them, Melikoff. Why, in western Europethey execute common murderers. As to a gang of assassins like that,death would be regarded a mild punishment." He lighted a cigarette, butforthwith extinguished it and went on with emphasis: "We handle themwith kid gloves, Melikoff. That's why they take chances."
He spoke with subdued anger, citing the republican uprising led byaristocratic army officers in 1825, which his father (the man whoseportrait was on the right wall) quelled by means of field guns.Loris-Melikoff demurred to the comparison, tactfully hinting that therewould be no betrayal of weakness in inviting the public to participatein the extermination of crime by showing it signs of increased imperialconfidence, and the Czar softened again. He felt that the Armenian knewhow to save him and he willingly submitted to his and PrincessDolgoruki's influence. But Fate was bent on tragedy.
Alexander II. lacked anything but courage. Still, this continuousliving under fire had gradually unnerved him. The soldier on thebattlefield finds moral support in the presence of thousands ofcomrades, all facing the same fate as he; whereas he was like a lone manon top of a dynamite pile. And if his perils were shared by those abouthim, this only added the agonising consciousness that his person carriedthe shadow of destruction with it, endangering the life of every l
ivingbeing that came near him. He knew, for example, that when he was at thetheatre candles were kept ready, in case the lights were blown out by anexplosion; that many people stayed away from the playhouse on suchoccasions for fear of being destroyed along with their sovereign. Hispride would not let him feel low-spirited. He very often forced himselfto disdain caution, to act with reckless courage. Nevertheless he had adreary, jaded look. The notion that he, the most powerful of men, theimage of grandeur and human omnipotence, should tremble at every sound,wounded his common human pride acutely. The consequence was that thismightiest monarch in the world, the gigantic man of sixty-two, every bitof him an Emperor, was at heart a terror-stricken infant mutelyimploring for help. He continued to appear in the streets of thecapital, accompanied by his usual escort and to return the salutes ofpassers-by with his usual air of majestic ease. Now and then he went tothe theatre, and occasionally even beyond the scenes for a flirtationwith the actresses. But the public knew that besides his large uniformedescort, his carriage was watched by hordes of detectives in citizen'sclothes, and that every inch of the ground which he was to traverse wasall but turned inside out for possible signs of danger. And those whowere admitted to his presence knew that underneath his grand,free-and-easy bearing was a sick heart and a crushed spirit. That theenemy was an unknown quantity was one of the sources of his growingdisquiet. The organised movement might be very large and it might beridiculously small, but with a latent half-Nihilist in the heart ofevery subject. He was beginning to realise at last that he knew hispeople scarcely better than he did the French or the English. He wasanxious to make peace with that invisible enemy of his, provided it didnot look as if he did.
He was willing to be deceived, and Loris-Melikoff was about to help himdeceive himself. But destiny was against them both. He was an honestman, Loris-Melikoff, serious-minded, public-spirited, one of the fewable statesmen Russia ever had; but his path was strewn with thorns.