done, and the most indomitable of men cannot yet
control the winds of heaven; but sovereigns are
rarely governed by logic, and frequently by the fav-
orite at hand. The privilege of writing personally
to the Tsar, in his case, meant more and less than
appeared on the surface. It was a measure to keep
the reports of the Company out of the hands of the
Admiralty College, its bitterest enemy, and always
jealous of the Civil Service. Nevertheless, Rezanov
knew that he had no immediate reason to apprehend
the loss of Alexander's friendship and esteem; and
if he placed the Company, in which all the imperial
family had bought shares, on a sounder basis than
ever before, and doubled its earnings by insuring the
health of its employees, he would meet, when in St.
Petersburg again, with practically no opposition to
his highest ambitions. These ambitions he delib-
erately kept in a fluid state for the present.
Whether he should aspire to great authority in the
government, or choose to rule with the absolute
powers of the Tsar himself these already vast pos-
sessions on the Pacific--to be extended indefinitely
--would be decided by events. All his inherited and
cultivated instincts yearned for the brilliant and
complex civilizations of Europe, but the new world
had taken a firm hold upon his humaner and
appealed more insidiously to his despotic. More-
over, Europe, torn up by that human earthquake,
Napoleon Bonaparte, must lose the greater half of
its sweetness and savor. All that, however, could