'Not the Czar?' Oswald inquired of Ernest.

'Yes, the one whom you call Czar,' said the stranger, quickly, in
tolerable English. The confusion of tongues seemed to be treated as
a small matter at Max Schurz's receptions, for everybody appeared
to speak all languages at once, in the true spirit of solidarity,
as though Babel had never been.

Oswald did not attempt to conceal a slight gesture of horror. The
tall Russian looked down upon him commiseratingly. 'He is of the
Few?' he asked of Ernest, that being the slang of the initiated
for a member of the aristocratic and capitalist oligarchy.

'Not exactly,' Ernest answered with a smile; 'but he has not entirely
learned the way we here regard these penal measures. His sympathies
are one-sided as to Alexander, no doubt. He thinks merely of the
hunted, wretched life the man bears about with him, and he forgets
poor bleeding, groaning, down-trodden, long-suffering Russia. It
is the common way of Englishmen. They do not realise Siberia and
Poland and the Third Section, and all the rest of it; they think
only of Alexander as of the benevolent despot who freed the serf
and befriended the Bulgarian. They never remember that they have
all the freedom and privileges themselves which you poor Russians
ask for in vain; they do not bear in mind that he has only to sign
his name to a constitution, a very little constitution, and he
might walk abroad as light-hearted in St. Petersburg to-morrow as
you and I walk in Regent Street to-day. We are mostly lopsided,
we English, but you must bear with us in our obliquity; we have
had freedom ourselves so long that we hardly know how to make due
allowance for those unfortunate folks who are still in search of