Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/427

Rh as new and as faultless as a louis d'or fresh from the mint; and he has used, and is using, his enormous influence to repress in other countries the party of progress,—or of revolution, which you will,—such as the insurgents of Spain and the Carbonari of Italy. He even hesitates to assist the Greeks, who, by the way, seem really to deserve assistance and compassion."

"Ah," cried Ivan with excitement, "there indeed the Czar's perplexity is great. Every true Russian longs to trample in the dust that abominable Ottoman tyranny—cruel, cowardly, treacherous as it is—and to deliver our suffering fellow-Christians, from whom there is going up daily to the throne of God 'the cry of the oppressed that have no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there is power, but they have no comforter.' Need I tell you that the first of Russians longs for it more than any of his subjects? But hitherto it could only have been done at the price of another European war. And even then it might have been done in vain."

"Why so?" asked Emile.

"Because unless the Czar had a fleet in readiness to support his army, every Christian in Greece might be massacred before our troops could reach Constantinople."

"His position is a difficult one," said Emile.

"Difficult?" Ivan repeated with a heavy sigh. "Would it were only difficult! Sometimes it seems to me as if his way were so hedged about that it is impossible for him to do anything at all. First look abroad, upon the perplexed field of European politics. There his unceasing efforts to maintain the peace of the world have already cost him dear. While he endeavours with the one hand to repress the spirit of lawlessness and anarchy, he is trying with the other to move the 'powers that be' in the direction of justice, mercy, and moderation; and consequently he is misunderstood by both. Liberals revile him as a friend of tyrants, a renegade from the cause of freedom; princes accuse him of opening the flood-gates before the torrent