Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/388

378 here, if possible, to care for and cultivate a few flowers for themselves."

Ivan shook his head. "And share the common fate of reformers," he said. "The mujik is a good fellow, but you will find it hard to move him. He hates change, even change for the better. If he ever learn to read his Bible, as I hope with God's blessing he will, I think his favourite text will be, 'Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths.'"

"And yet," said Clémence, "you tell me he is wonderfully pliable and imitative; that if you take the little mujik from his village you can make of him anything you please—soldier, valet, coachman, musician, even scholar or artist."

"Yes; and you can make anything you please of a bar of iron—under certain conditions. But it would be almost as easy to bend the cold iron with your hand as to change the ways of the bearded mujik under the roof of his own izba.—But I think, dearest, we must rejoin our friends; I hear preparations for supper in the next room."

Ivan had brought with him to Nicolofsky an alert, clever young German doctor, and a gray-haired French priest. It had been his wish, no less than that of Clémence herself, that his wife should enjoy the rites of her own communion; and Henri, who spent much of his leisure in visiting the poor, discovered amongst them an old acquaintance of the family, who seemed exactly suited for the post of domestic chaplain to Madame la Princesse Pojarsky. M. Grandpierre, a relative of the valued and faithful steward of the De Talmonts, was the curé of a country parish in La Vendée when the war broke out. He stoutly exhorted his parishioners to fight for their King; marched with them to the field; ministered to the wounded and shrived the dying, often amidst the rain of Republican bullets. When the cause he loved was lost, he took refuge in Paris; and there, after years of poverty, Henri found him in a garret of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Many sorrows had tamed his fiery