Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/402

392 As, with a hand still trembling, Clémence poured out the tea, she remembered the stories she had heard of such evening visits made by the Emperor, "to talk at his ease," and recalled the words of De Maistre when some one criticised this habit in his presence: "It is a touching thing to me to see the ruler of a great empire, in the age of all the passions, find his recreation in taking a cup of tea with an honest man and his wife."

In the meantime her place behind the "samovar" was no sinecure, for the Emperor drank many cups of tea, while he talked earnestly with Ivan upon the things of which his heart was full—schools, hospitals, and prison reforms. He soon drew Clémence into the conversation. Her interest in the institutions of St. Petersburg was evidently well known to him, and he asked her opinion on various matters of detail, especially about the school for the deaf and dumb. Then they talked of primary schools, and of the Lancastrian system, which he had sent commissioners to England to investigate with a view of adopting it in Russia. This led to the general subject of education, which he remarked ought not to be merely mechanical, but adapted to the development of the intelligence.

"Some teachers would turn their pupils into absolute machines," he said, "by way of levelling their path to knowledge."

Here the soft voice of Clémence broke in. "Ought not religion to be the foundation of all education?" she asked somewhat timidly.

"If education is, properly speaking, the extension of light," said the Emperor, "surely it ought first of all to extend the true light—the light that shineth in darkness."

As a means to this end, he spoke of the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, a work which he was then urging forward with all his influence. He gratefully acknowledged the services of the noble British and Foreign Bible Society, and spoke with enthusiasm of that and other agencies which were