IMAGINARY COGITATIONS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2514, 26 January 1877, Page 2

IMAGINARY COGITATIONS.

(PHOM THE Pi.lL MAIL GAZETTB.)

[Wakes—the curtains are flung aside;] " Ah, le beau jour! "—What hare I said! Those were another Alexander's last word.s. So it is! Even gladness in the beauty of the day cannot run ahead of my troubles; I must needs express a surprise . of joy in the language of the dying man. But for that unlucky exclamation I might have kept out of mind for one little minute more the weariness of every day and all the day. For one minute, I said. And to think that I meant it!—to think that a single minute of a child's freedom from care should be really and truly'a • thing for a man to lose with a sigh! But it is reasonable enough. There comes to all of tis a time when five—four—threetwo minutes, even of pain .are inestimable, everything: I mean, dear Lord, in this world. What should I think if I had had a whole half-hour of a boy's freedom from care when I woke ? I fancy myself going to the •window with an "Ah! le beau jour! " of the old kind, with, a glance to the sky, and another to the gar* den, and there starts a bird, and there peeps a flower, and my dogs are below lifting their heads, as they leap and bark at my voice, and Hallo it is,' and hurrah ! and (leaping from his bed) Q God, to be a boy again, with no throne, no crown, erer. ever to come in sight.

ever, ever to come in signt. •,_•-,- Heavens! how pale, how worn I looK, spite of the flush from my red gown J Can this last—at this rate ? Do others see me like this.' I hope not—nor is it likely. Who was it once said to me. (I recollect I) " Look at yourself in a glass, look long, look fixedly and searchingly, and you will catch sight of a face your friends have never seen and never will see." That was true, and it is true of everybody, I suppose. I who know my sinful nature saw more of it than I supposed my face could reveal under any scrutiny. And so I hope it is of these fears and cares—fears, cares, forebodings, voices, I know not what. But they -pale my very heart, and I feel it pale as plainly as I see that white and restless face. Yes, restless; restless; let me tell the truth to myself. My father did so—in a time not like this, it is . true, but like what may come after this. And my uncle Alexander, too, of whom I think I ought to have been the son—the feebler son. He told the truth to himself. It was not. caprice,' that service for the dead that he ordered in secret, and attended alone, in the dark hours of an autumn morning, when he came south from St. Petersburg for the last time. Who" knows, though, what he meant,— what was on his mind ? He still.talked of abdication: and he would have lived more than three months after that dark morning in the Monastery of St. Alexander if he had not—if he had not —no; they would have murdered him before the spring. It was fever that killed him ?—} yes, and the conspiracy. Who can live burdened with an empire like his, with a history like his and mine—no not mine s * yes, mine !—-who can live, I say, burdened . with such an empire and such a family history, and with assassination known to be haunting you day by day ? He wished to die; we know he wished to die—worn out long before he came to my age. But what are my troubles to his, or what are they to my father's —after the war ? Strange ! —it is like it, like fatality I Can it be that providence has that way of visiting our sins upon us ?—upon me, too, who am no parricide, nor could have con» spired to spill my father's blood, no, not for the mastery of the universe. There seems to be doom in these Turkish wars. They are like, a forced inheritance of bloodshed and defeat—ah, and of mad* ness toe. They may whisper and argue as they please—l see it sit weighs upon me night and day. What yet has been our gain, and what price has been paid for it ? The war that is now being forced on me is nothing else than a direct inheritance from that unhappy, guilty, repentant Alexander (Heaven forgive him !) who decided on it as madly as we shall do, if we do; and he was threatened by '< enthusiasms in the army, by smouldering conspiracy and revolt, as my counsellors say I am. Madly, for he knew what war was. Cities had been burned, tens of thousands of Russians had pershed. under his eyes ; and yet he could at last order war against Turkey—"in the spring "—with the prospect of having all Europe against him! But" in the spring " he was to have been murdered in his capital; and in the winter [opening a' drawer and taking a paper from it], with his assassins' names in his pocket-book. And where did he die, and how ? In the bloody Crimea, and of fever 'that rose from the road they made for him through the buried corses of Potemkin's soldiery. And I at least know that my father took up this war together with the crown—took it in all its detail and intention to his

heart—carried it out, self-deceived and self-betrayed; add when all was done, death struck at him too out of heaped Crimean graves and the ruin around them. And now I am told the time has come for anojher Turkish war; and it is imperative ; that it is scarcely a matter of choice: fated in short. Indeed, I have even found the fatality in my own will, and do yet, much as I battle against it. God forgive me if I battle against his voice. I would not if I knew it for his own, even though it led me and my empire to perish for his Church's sake. But can he work by revolutionaries, by conspirators, and assassins ? For all these persuade me, and I only need his own clear voice. If I could feel myself called, and not compelled—-! For we seem to drive and drift from point to point, as if by supernatural compulsion. How otherwise could we have reached this point now, unless, indeed, I have been played upon and deceived! At the beginning it was to have been only another though a longer stride southward. Nobody was to have been alarmed; there was to have been no agitation that could not easily be soothed, and no step forward that could not be i retraced. Above all (how often have j they sworn to that) —nothing was to be done that could bring us within danger of war. And that, indeed, would have been done. But in a few short months W«vhat has it come to ? What now do I hear on all sides 1 War, war; in every tone of persuasion, warning, reproach, menace, comes one who shows me my Saviour crucified daily by the Turks. Comes another with the tale that it is better to go to war with an army and no money than to wait till for want of one there will be neither. Comes another who tells me of excitement among the people, and bids me choose whether my soldiery shall march with me or over me. Can it be that all this ferment exists ?—that the whole system of government is in danger of being swept away in a concourse of great enthusiasim and ,unruly passions if I dare to affront or drive it back ? They , say so, but monarchs have been deceived * before now, and have been betrayed into rentures'they scarcely understood by the arts of ministers and the persuasions of women. But she may be right. Women are often the best counsellors; and if death brings understanding, penetration, prophecy to dying men, as we know it does, why should not anxious love do the same in women? And they are not all women.:,■ Soldiers, statesmen, and police —those who have most to say—worry and wear me down with their warnings and persuasions. War or revolution, or rather war now, or both war and revolution by-and-bye ; we must make our choice between them tp-d'qy. What was Baryatinski's last word: "When your armies occupied "France they brought back other things besides glory; they brought back pest^.ential ideas which have grown into strange and dangerous shapes ; your Majesty must count with them. The . Panslayistic idea dominates all others j it has seized upon the army, it has become so hot and furious that to control it seems all but impossibly. I pray your majesty not to attempt to control it. Leadit! Head it! All these other revolutionary and socialistic passions will merge at once in 1 a war of liberation ; in a religious war they will burn out. Even in case of defeat —defeat in a war of liberation and religion only binds a nation the closer together; while, if we succeed—-" If we succeed J If, what mighty success it would be! and I must be true to my family, true to my faith. Holy Russia indeed shall my country be called, and all the saints in Heaven rejoice in her, if we do sweep these impious and cruel hordes out of every Christian land. It shall be, done—l am all but resolved it shall be done. But is my hand strong enough for the work ? It is not a cowardly hand, but it falters, and my head —ah me. But when , things' like these come to one—[opening the letter he has crushed in his hand], why no; these are the little prayers I made her write out for me, and not that vile letter threatening my life. Poor little paper, j and I have crushed you so! just as I have often felt my prayers crushed back upon my lips, stifling me. And —what is that ? [spying a folded paper on his writing table]. It was not there last night! Who placed it there ? Who has dared——? [A. knock.] ... . Come in ! Ha, you then. Please knock less loudly; it is intolerable. Place my chocolate there, over that paper. Go!— Has it come to this—threats thrown in my very bedchamber? . But courage. God is in ieaven. And there is my white pigeon on the window sill.