f anger or any other kind of emotion had been visible
on his features.

"Nevertheless," he went on, "the very man in whose hands the fate of
so many now lies, the very man whom no prayer for mercy could ever have
influenced, himself desires to make a request of you. Should you grant
that request, all will be forgotten and blotted out and pardoned, for
I myself will intercede with the Throne on your behalf. That request is
this. I know that by no manner of means, by no preventive measures, and
by no penalties will dishonesty ever be completely extirpated from our
midst, for the reason that its roots have struck too deep, and that
the dishonourable traffic in bribes has become a necessity to, even the
mainstay of, some whose nature is not innately venal. Also, I know that,
to many men, it is an impossibility to swim against the stream. Yet now,
at this solemn and critical juncture, when the country is calling aloud
for saviours, and it is the duty of every citizen to contribute and to
sacrifice his all, I feel that I cannot but issue an appeal to every man
in whom a Russian heart and a spark of what we understand by the word
'nobility' exist. For, after all, which of us is more guilty than his
fellow? It may be to ME the greatest culpability should be assigned, in
that at first I may have adopted towards you too reserved an attitude,
that I may have been over-hasty in repelling those who desired but to
serve me, even though of their services I did not actually stand in
need. Yet, had they really loved justice and the good of their country,
I think that they would have been less prone to take offence at the
coldness of my attitude, but would have sacrificed their feelings and
their personality to their superior convictions. For hardly can it
be that I failed to note their overtures and the loftiness of their
motives, or that I would not have accepted any wise and useful advice
proffered. At the same time, it is for a subordinate to adapt himself to
the tone of his superior, rather than for a superior to adapt himself to
the tone of his subordinate. Such a course is at once more regular
and more smooth of working, since a corps of subordinates has but one
director, whereas a director may have a hundred subordinates. But let us
put aside the question of comparative culpability. The important point
is, that before us all lies the duty of rescuing our fatherland. Our
fatherland is suffering, not from the incursion of a score of