-parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good
promise--which Alexander gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas
took away with so much bloodshed.

And not far from this monument of the deathless hate Nicholas bore that
liberty he had stung to death stands a monument of his admiration for
straightforward tyranny, even in the most dreaded enemy his house ever
knew. Standing there is a statue in the purest of marble,--the only
statue in those vast halls. It has the place of honor. It looks proudly
over all that glory, and keeps ward over all that treasure; and that
statue, in full majesty of imperial robes and bees and diadem and face,
is of the first Napoleon. Admiration of his tyrannic will has at last
made him peaceful sovereign of the Kremlin.

This spirit of absolutism took its most offensive form in Nicholas's
attitude toward Europe. He was the very incarnation of reaction against
revolution, and he became the demigod of that horde of petty despots who
infest Central Europe.

Whenever, then, any tyrant's lie was to be baptized, he stood its
godfather; whenever any God's truth was to be crucified, he led on
those who passed by reviling and wagging their heads. Whenever these
oppressors revived some old feudal wrong, Nicholas backed them in the
name of Religion; whenever their nations struggled to preserve some
great right, Nicholas crushed them in the name of Law and Order. With
these pauper princes his children intermarried, and he fed them with his
crumbs, and clothed them with scraps of his purple. The visitor can
see to-day, in every one of their dwarf palaces, some of his malachite
vases, or porcelain bowls, or porphyry columns.

But the _people_ of Western Europe distrusted him as much as their
rulers worshipped; and some of these same presents to their rulers have
become trifle-monuments of no mean value in showing that popular idea
of Russian policy. Foremost among these stand those two bronze masses
of statuary in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin,--representing fiery
horses restrained by strong men. Pompous inscriptions proclaim these
presents from Nicholas; but the people, knowing the man and his
measures, have fastened forever upon one of these curbed steeds the name
of "Progress Checked," and on the other, "Retrogression Encouraged."

And the people were right. Whether sending presents to gladden his
Prussian pupil, or sending armies to crush Hungary, or sending sneering
messages