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