The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-11-01

and mother receive liberal pension" At
another time this unhappy Majesty-always
looking for assassins-blots out the life of
young ministerial secretary while the latter
was about to doff his hat to him, during
chance meeting on the staircase. The
Car imagined the poor young fellow
wanted to hit him.
Driving in st. Petersburg, where shall we
go? Eve must not touch the avenue, for
grandfather was assassinated there, and
the neighborhood of Michaeloff. Palace Is to
to be avoided since Emperor Paul was
strangled in the room. the shutters of
which are kept closed. Don't go to st.
Issac's Square; there the twenty gibbets
for the Cars murderers were raised. nor
to Admiralty square. where my father
came near losing his life.''
Wherever Nicholas goes, the streets are
swept clean of subjects. blinds are drawn
and it's death to allow a chimney sweep on
the roof. Nicholas is an intelligent man.
He reads, speaks and writes at least four
languages. is genuinely interested in scien-
tifc problems studies every new discovery
yet has a holy horror of the intelligent
classes. Asleep awake he surrounds him
self with tens Of thousands of hired pro-
whom he rules by fear only. Russians,
pale when they speak or think of their al
mighty Car, and the Car himself pales
at the sight of every nonuniformed man or
woman.
During the Moscow coronation festivities,
in 1896. heard Nicholas proclaim his love
Of peace and progress, but nothing has
altered in Russia since then. The throne
is still occupied by badly frightened little
chap, and the hundreds of millions of Rus
sian subjects are no more hopeful of liber-
| ty under Nicholas than they were under
Paul and Alexander.
| While the Car was shooting pheasants
| in Darmstadt his representatives were
| hunting Jews at home, and by the time he
got ready to kill mountain sheep at Murz-
| steg the Cossacks were driving the Armen-
| ians at the ends of their pixies.
A WITHDRAWING MAN.
| ''But he is well-meaning man, has the
best intentions in the world" says the
| Grand Duke of Hesse, his brother-in-law.
| do not doubt his Royal Highness;
accept the sorry Of Princess Hohenberg,
| who told me the Car sometimes spends
many days and nights in succession. crying
| with despair over his peoples woes. That
! only makes him the more of an enigma
| that he has the will and the power and the
moral support of the whole world. yet does
nothing, absolutely nothing, to better
| things.
Like his fathers, who were murdered. and
| like those who murdered their fathers,
| Nicholas is content to live in prison. to
carry fear before him and to shake with
| fear himself. His fear of what will come,
| and must come, is so great that it gave
| him a peculiar disease of the eye. He
sees everything in double; the real person
| or thing reflected on his retlna and the
menace that may or may not Turk behind.
So has every noise two meanings for Nicho-
las. the actual and a hypothetical mean
| Ing, born out of his fear-ridden imagination.
At Vienna and Schoenbrunn I noticed par
| ticularly, that the Cars thin checks We're
pale. am afraid this paleness was due to
the apprehension that the living protective
| wall surrounding him may some day spring
gap, through which the fist shall be
thrust that is hammering at the outside.
For the rest: An incomprehensible man
is the Car, and his head is lowered In
| fright.
HELOISE COMTESSE D'ALEMCOURT.