Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/396

386 There were at this time in the best society of St. Petersburg two distinct religious circles, differing widely, and each in its own way very influential. At the Sardinian Embassy, the "old man eloquent," Count de Maistre,—with his white hair and eyes of fire, his "esprit fin" indescribable in English, his keen, quick sympathies, and his brave, high, chivalrous spirit,—strove hard to turn the stream of religious thought into a strong and steady current leading Romewards. He was worthy to have been the champion of a better cause; but he and those like him never really knew for what they were contending. They were as loyal-hearted soldiers who fight and die heroically beneath the banner of a usurper, honestly believing they are serving their true king. Madame Svetchine, Countess Tolstoi, and other devout women, were just then yielding to the fascination of De Maistre's eloquence; and a colony of Jesuits, zealous, active, and not over-scrupulous, were furthering the work of proselytism after their peculiar fashion.

Around Prince Galitzin, Alexander Tourgenieff, Princess Metchersky, and others of a similar character, there gathered a very different circle—earnest students of Scripture, simple evangelical Christians, with whom faith and love were the fulfilling of the law, and forms occupied a very subordinate place. These were in constant communication with the leaders of the evangelical movement in other countries, and especially with the agents of the Bible Society. They knew themselves the objects of suspicion and aversion, not only to the Romanizing party, but also to the zealous members of the Greek Church, the men of the old school, who were strongly attached to things as they were, and jealous of all reform. But they were strengthened by the knowledge that the heart of the Emperor was with them, though his sense of justice made him endeavour to hold the balance evenly between the contending parties, and his natural attachment to the Church of which he was the head deterred him from any course that he thought likely to