iest; for the priest could not explain to them why
it was that God sent a four-month-long winter which cut them off from
the rest of the world behind impassable barriers of snow; that God sent
them droughts in the summer so that there was no crop of rye; that God
scourged them with dread and horrible disease!

It is almost impossible for us to realize, in these days of a lamentably
cheap press and a cheaper literature, the mental condition of men and
women who have no education, no newspaper, no news of the world, no
communication with the universe. To them the mystery of the Moscow
doctor was as incomprehensible as to us is the Deity. They were so near
to the animals that Paul could not succeed in teaching them that disease
and death followed on the heels of dirt and neglect. They were too
ignorant to reason, too low down the animal scale to comprehend things
which some of the dumb animals undoubtedly recognize.

Paul Alexis, half Russian, half English, understood these people very
thoroughly. He took advantage of their ignorance, their simplicity,
their unfathomable superstition. He governed as no other could have
ruled them, by fear and kindness at once. He mastered them by his
vitality, the wholesome strength of his nature, his infinite
superiority. He avoided the terrible mistake of the Nihilists by
treating them as children to whom education must be given little by
little instead of throwing down before them a mass of dangerous
knowledge which their minds, unaccustomed to such strong food, are
incapable of digesting.

A British coldness of blood damped as it were the Russian quixotism
which would desire to see result follow upon action--to see the world
make quicker progress than its Creator has decreed. With very
unsatisfactory material Paul was setting in motion a great rock which
will roll down into the ages unconnected with his name, clearing a path
through a very thick forest of ignorance and tyranny.

CHAPTER XI

CATRINA

The man who carries a deceit, however innocent, with him through life is
apt to be somewhat handicapped in that unfair competition. He is like a
ship at sea with a "sprung" mainmast. A side breeze may arise at any
moment which throws him all aback and upon his beam-ends. He runs
illegitimate risks, which are things much given to dragging at a man's
mind, handicapping his thoughts.

Paul suffered in this way. It was a distinct burthen to him to play a
double part, although e