Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/406

396 saw you—the day of the review in the Plaine des Vertus. How well he looks, does he not, Clémence?"

"Yes; well, but worn; and there is a weary look in his eyes. I think he needs rest, Ivan."

Ivan shook his head a little sadly. "Do you know where he is going now?" he asked.

"Home, I suppose; it is midnight."

"Ilya tells our people he is going to visit the hospitals. He goes sometimes at midnight, to ascertain that the patients are as well cared for by night as by day. Yet to-morrow morning at six o'clock he will be in his cabinet or on parade."

"The light that shines must burn, and burn out," said Clémence. "But, Ivan," she added with hesitation, "may I say something?"

"What thing is there which you may not say, my Clémence?"

"There is one thing which you would not hear from any lip on earth—a word of blame for your Czar. But do not think I mean it so if I ask, could not some life less precious be found to spend itself in these ministrations? Would not he do well to remember the warning of Jethro—'Thou wilt surely wear away, thou, and this people that is with thee; for this thing is too heavy for thee'?"

"Clémence, you do not know our Russians. I love them well, yet I see their faults, which are something like those of clever, ill-educated children, but on a gigantic scale. They are, when they choose it, the most accomplished of deceivers. They can elaborate and carry out a fraud with a patient ingenuity, a consummate dexterity, that one is tempted to call quite artistic. When the Czarina Catherine travelled through the empire, her courtiers of course wished her to imagine it in a state of the highest prosperity; so they erected mock villages along her route, and drove to the neighbourhood herds of