been a little too successful in its
fight against the enemies of the church. It had established "provinces"
in every part of the world, to teach the natives the blessings of
Christianity, but soon it had developed into a regular trading company
which was for ever interfering with the civil authorities. During
the reign of the Marquis de Pombal, the great reforming minister of
Portugal, they had been driven out of the Portuguese lands and in the
year 1773 at the request of most of the Catholic powers of Europe, the
order had been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV. Now they were back on
the job, and preached the principles of "obedience" and "love for the
legitimate dynasty" to children whose parents had hired shopwindows that
they might laugh at Marie Antoinette driving to the scaffold which was
to end her misery.

But in the Protestant countries like Prussia, things were not a whit
better. The great patriotic leaders of the year 1812, the poets and the
writers who had preached a holy war upon the usurper, were now branded
as dangerous "demagogues." Their houses were searched. Their letters
were read. They were obliged to report to the police at regular
intervals and give an account of themselves. The Prussian drill master
was let loose in all his fury upon the younger generation. When a party
of students celebrated the tercentenary of the Reformation with noisy
but harmless festivities on the old Wartburg, the Prussian bureaucrats
had visions of an imminent revolution. When a theological student,
more honest than intelligent, killed a Russian government spy who
was operating in Germany, the universities were placed under
police-supervision and professors were jailed or dismissed without any
form of trial.

Russia, of course, was even more absurd in these anti-revolutionary
activities. Alexander had recovered from his attack of piety. He was
gradually drifting toward melancholia. He well knew his own limited
abilities and understood how at Vienna he had been the victim both of
Metternich and the Krudener woman. More and more he turned his back
upon the west and became a truly Russian ruler whose interests lay in
Constantinople, the old holy city that had been the first teacher of the
Slavs. The older he grew, the harder he worked and the less he was able
to accomplish. And while he sat in his study, his ministers turned the
whole of Russia into a land of military barracks.

It is not a pretty picture. Perhaps I might ha