by a romantic villainy not easily to be
credited, for those very acts of interference with the 30
council which he himself had prompted. This was a
dangerous step: but it was indispensable to his farther
advance upon the gloomy path which he had traced out
for himself. A triple vengeance was what he meditated:
1, upon the Russian Cabinet, for having undervalued his
own pretensions to the throne; 2, upon his amiable rival,
for having supplanted him; and 3, upon all those of the
nobility who had manifested their sense of his weakness
by their neglect or their sense of his perfidious character 5
by their suspicions. Here was a colossal outline of wickedness;
and by one in his situation, feeble (as it might
seem) for the accomplishment of its humblest parts, how
was the total edifice to be reared in its comprehensive
grandeur? He, a worm as he was, could he venture to 10
assail the mighty behemoth of Muscovy, the potentate
who counted three hundred languages around the footsteps
of his throne, and from whose "lion ramp" recoiled
alike "baptized and infidel"--Christendom on the one
side, strong by her intellect and her organization, and the 15
"barbaric East" on the other, with her unnumbered
numbers? The match was a monstrous one; but in its
very monstrosity there lay this germ of encouragement--that
it could not be suspected. The very hopelessness
of the scheme grounded his hope; and he resolved to 20
execute a vengeance which should involve as it were, in
the unity of a well-laid tragic fable, all whom he judged
to be his enemies. That vengeance lay in detaching from
the Russian empire the whole Kalmuck nation and breaking
up that system of intercourse which had thus far been 25
beneficial to both. This last was a consideration which
moved him but little. True it was that Russia to the
Kalmucks had secured lands and extensive pasturage;
true it was that the Kalmucks reciprocally to Russia had
furnished a powerful cavalry; but the latter loss would be 30
part of his triumph, and the former might be more than
compensated in other climates, under other sovereigns.
Here was a scheme which, in its final accomplishment,
would avenge him bitterly on the Czarina, and in the
course of its accomplishment might furnish him with
ample occasions for removing his other enemies. It may
be readily supposed, indeed, that he who could deliberately
ra