Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 9.djvu/163

 THE EMPEROR AND PELISSIER. 133 show of loyalty; but, whilst thus lightly fencing chap. with words, ho had always in action proved stub- .' born, doing simply what he himself chose, and nothing that the Emperor ordered^ 1 ) But when answering the Emperor's letter of the 14th of June, Pelissier altered his tone. No longer evasive, he was graver, more stern. He stood fiercely at bay. He told the Emperor plainly that the full execution of his orders was ' impossible ' ; declared that those orders subjected him to the alternative of either resisting author- ity, or dishonouring himself by obeying it, and prayed that by his Majesty's orders he might be either set free from the narrow limits assigned him, or allowed to resign the command — a com- mand he described as one ' impossible to exercise ' in concert with our loyal allies, at the sometimes 1 paralysing extremity of an electric wire.' * For any answer at all to this stern des- patch Pelissier was kept waiting in vain through- out the whole day and the night of the 17th of June. The truth is that, whilst torturing Pelissier by perverse interference the Emperor was himself under tortures of the kind that needs must be suffered by any distracted mortal who long and anxiously hesitates on a question he deems to be vital. To be treated as a dreamy civilian by one of his generals was mortifying of course to his vanity, and subversive of his curious pretension to rule as a quasi-Napoleon ; yet at a time so big
 * Pelissier to the Emperor, 16th June 1S55.