Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/81

Rh The most fashionable vice of the Russian nobility at this period was the perilous excitement of the gaming-table. In this, as in other things, the licentious court of Catherine II. had been to the whole empire a very seed-plot of corruption. It is recorded that on one occasion the Empress herself had been unable to obtain a glass of water, so engrossed were pages, equerries, ladies-in-waiting, even grooms and porters, with their cards and their dice. Things were altered now. Alexander neither played himself, nor permitted any one to play for money within the precincts of his palace; but when once evil seed has been sown, who can eradicate the crop that springs from it?

Adrian Wertsch was now a tchinovik; that is to say, he had obtained a place under government which gave him an official tchin, or rank, corresponding to a particular grade in the army, the standard of all honour under the military despotism of the Czars. Leon had a commission, and had recently joined his regiment. Like every one else, he was greatly excited by the prospect of the war with France; but, like nearly every one, he thought the vast army Napoleon had been collecting was intended to winter in Germany, and that the grand drama for which all the world was looking with strained eyes and eager hearts would not be played out until the following summer.

About Ivan's future there was some perplexity, but of a kind which no one was in a hurry to solve. His education had begun very late, and his present life of elegant dissipation was very pleasant. Still, when Count Rostopchine became Governor of Moscow, early in 1812, Ivan's friends thought it well to present him, acquainting the count with his position as the penniless heir of a great though proscribed name. But Rostopchine was a Russian of the old school, in whom the proverbial "Tartar" was very near the surface. He surveyed Ivan critically, from his perfumed hair to his silk stockings