rithing
and howling horribly, uttered some violent words against the disgrace
of the punishment, and the pettiness of his fault; what the fault was I
forget.

"Now ask the Russian," said Peter. "My punishment was just!" said the
Russian, coolly, putting on his clothes as if nothing had happened; "God
and the Czar were angry with me!"

"Come away, Count," said the Czar; "and now solve me a problem. I know
both those men, and the German, in a battle, would be the braver of
the two. How comes it that he weeps and writhes like a girl, while the
Russian bears the same pain without a murmur?"

"Will your Majesty forgive me," said I, "but I cannot help wishing that
the Russian had complained more bitterly; insensibility to punishment is
the sign of a brute, not a hero. Do you not see that the German felt the
indignity, the Russian did not? and do you not see that that very pride
which betrays agony under the disgrace of the battaog is exactly the
very feeling that would have produced courage in the glory of the
battle? A sense of honour makes better soldiers and better men than
indifference to pain."

"But had I ordered the Russian to death, he would have gone with the
same apathy and the same speech, 'It is just! I have offended God and
the Czar!'"

"Dare I observe, Sire, that that fact would be a strong proof of the
dangerous falsity of the old maxims which extol indifference to death as
a virtue? In some individuals it may be a sign of virtue, I allow; but,
as a _national trait_, it is the strongest sign of national misery. Look
round the great globe. What countries are those where the inhabitants
bear death with cheerfulness, or, at least, with apathy? Are they the
most civilized, the most free, the most prosperous? Pardon me; no! They
are the half-starved, half-clothed, half-human sons of the forest
and the waste; or, when gathered in states, they are slaves without
enjoyment or sense beyond the hour; and the reason that they do not
recoil from the pangs of death is because they have never known the real
pleasures or the true objects of life."

"Yet," said the Czar, musingly, "the contempt of death was the great
characteristic of the Spartans."

"And, therefore," said I, "the great token that the Spartans were a
miserable horde. Your Majesty admires England and the English; you have,
beyond doubt, witnessed an execution in that country; you have noted,
even where the criminal is consoled by religion, how he tremb