At his
approach, nobles uncovered and looked docile, soldiers faced about and
became statues, long-bearded peasants bowed to the ground with the air
of men on whose vision a miracle flashes. For there was one who could
make or mar all fortunes--the absolute owner of street and houses and
passers-by--one who owned the patent and dispensed the right to tread
that soil, to breathe that air, to be glorified in that sunlight and
amid those snow crystals. And he looked it all. Though at that moment
his army was entrapped by military stratagem, and he himself was
entrapped by diplomatic stratagem, that face and form were proud and
confident as ever.
There was in this attitude toward Europe--in this standing forth as the
representative man of absolutism, and breasting the nineteenth
century--something of greatness; but in his attitude toward Russia this
greatness was wretchedly diminished. For, as Alexander I was a good man
enticed out of goodness by the baits of Napoleon, Nicholas was a great
man scared out of greatness by the ever-recurring phantom of the French
Revolution.
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