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430 the Polish crown. The people were too grateful, too overjoyed, to doubt his sincerity; and were resigned to the abuses of Constantine’s rule, in the hope of a future when Poland would no longer be bound to Russia as a petty dependent State, but as a great kingdom, whose superior wealth, and infinitely superior intelligence, must give it equality, if not a preponderance, in the councils of the Crown. Thus, as long as Alexander lived, servitude was not quite hopeless; and only at his death did Poland awake to the full horror of her position.

Constantine, who had married a beautiful and virtuous Polish girl, immediately dismissed his seraglio, and gave up his debauched habits: for a little while the country hoped to find a protector from its tyrant in her; but though on every opportunity she never failed to intercede on the side of mercy with her husband, and he rarely refused her anything, she was permitted to know so little of all that was passing in the country, that her power for good was scarcely felt. Day after day she might sit in the silent, curtainless rooms of the Belvedere—for Constantine could endure no shadows or dark corners where he lived—and no echo reached her of the horrors he was perpetrating in the city and the camp.

Alexander died, and Constantine, to the astonishment of the world, declined the throne in favour of his younger brother, Nicholas—a brother who, totally devoid of moral qualities, and but very meagrely endowed with intellectual ones, was destined by mere force of will so to impose on the world, that his monstrous egotism should pass for genius, his brutal recklessness for power. This Old Man of the Sea, who so long crushed down in awful reverence some of the proudest crowns of Europe, was then scarce thirty years of age, and quite unknown to his own empire or to Europe. His real character was shown after Pestal’s conspiracy in 1825, by the wholesale hanging and torturing of those concerned in it, and condemning them in scores and hundreds to the mines of Siberia. The plot had large ramifications in Warsaw, and many Polish officers, and great part of the garrisons, were implicated in it.

Everything was prepared for the outbreak, when the wretched spy, Krasinski, who had wormed himself into the confidence of the patriots, denounced their projects to the Grand Duke. The chief leaders were arrested, and brought before the Senate for judgment. Constantine, by bribery and intimidation, felt confident of bending the high tribunal to his will, and his astonishment was scarcely less than his fury, when, of all the members, not one but his minion Krasinski voted for the condemnation of the prisoners. He swore that no others should so escape again; and in the meantime consoled himself with their suffering during the three years spent in the examinations, and by the death of the intrepid Bielniski, who defended the accused, but, worn out by the mental excitement and fatigue of the trial, scarcely survived its close. His burial almost caused an insurrection, and furnished a rich harvest of arrests.

Zaionek shortly afterwards died, the vice-royalty was abolished, and was Constantine invested with absolute power. His first care was to purge the Administrative Council, which still contained many honest, if not very courageous men; thenceforth every moment he could spare from the army, was given to perfecting his police system. A secret police had long since been organised by the Grand Duke, but its power had not been greatly felt until after Alexander’s death.

But from the date of Pestal’s conspiracy, scarcely a day went by without arrests; suicides were of constant occurrence; and over the smooth granite pavement of the bestrewed city, the kibitka bore its nightly victims to the mines or the fortresses of Siberia.

Poland grew impatient under this unendurable tyranny, and silently prepared for the coming struggle. The Emperor was engaged in war with Turkey for the deliverance of Greece; and the Poles, with ill-considered generosity perhaps, resolved to wait, rather than hinder the deliverance of another oppressed people; though, had they risen then, the chances were immensely in their favour. The Czar, tired of his Asiatic triumphs, now turned his attention to Europe; the bear entered into solemn league with the fox; the Romanoff and the Hohenzollern embraced each other at Berlin, and the latter was promised all the offal left by his still hungrier companion in the chase they proposed together. The wolf at that time was fitting on a new sheep-skin, and as he had plenty of troublesome flocks in the home-farm, he declined joining his friend; at least, until he saw how the sport was likely to turn out. Nicholas now felt the wisdom of conciliating the Poles, as Poland must be the basis of his future operations; and therefore he gave them the pleasure of seeing him crowned king in Warsaw. All went well at the grand ceremony: the new king was affability itself, walked unattended in the public promenades with his family, met with enthusiastic vivas and respectful deference everywhere; but when, on convening the Diet, instead of healing the heartburnings inflicted by constant prorogations, he answered the constitutional demands of the deputies by talking only of his prerogative, the hopes excited by his first appearance vanished; the vivas sunk into silence. The oppressor and the oppressed looked each other calmly in the face, and made their resolve. Nicholas felt that such favours as he was disposed to offer must be scorned by the country, so he determined to govern by terror. He cared little for this; his system would soon overcome all ill-conditioned discontent. He shortly left, to make the famous convention with the King of Prussia, and returned, for a few days, to Warsaw, to scatter stars and cordons among the venal aristocracy who crowded the antechambers of the Belvedere.

Lubeckoi, the Minister of Finance, was a man completely after the Emperor’s heart, loving nothing on earth, and fearing nothing but his imperial master, cruel as he was passionless, without prejudices as without principles, believing in no one, and false alike to friends and enemies; yet highly talented, full of expedients, never elated by success,