different
stamp. A few months before his tragic end I had a long and interesting
conversation with him, and I came away deeply impressed. Having
repeatedly had conversations of a similar kind with M. Witte, I could
compare, or rather contrast, the two men. Both of them evidently
possessed an exceptional amount of mental power and energy, but in the
one it was volcanic, and in the other it was concentrated and thoroughly
under control. In discussion, the one reminded me of the self-taught,
slashing swordsman; the other of the dexterous fencer, carefully trained
in the use of the foils, who never launches out beyond the point at
which he can quickly recover himself. As to whether M. Plehve was
anything more than a bold, energetic, clever official there may be
differences of opinion, but he certainly could assume the airs of a
profound and polished statesman, capable of looking at things from a
much higher point of view than the ordinary tchinovnik, and he had the
talent of tacitly suggesting that a great deal of genuine, enlightened
statesmanship lay hidden under the smooth surface of his cautious
reserve. Once or twice I could perceive that when criticising the
present state of things he had his volcanic colleague in his mind's eye;
but the covert allusions were so vague and so carefully worded that the
said colleague, if he had been present, would hardly have been justified
in entering a personal protest. A statesman of the higher type, I was
made to feel, should deal not with personalities, but with things, and
it would be altogether unbecoming to complain of a colleague in presence
of an outsider. Thus his attitude towards his opponent was most correct,
but it was not difficult to infer that he had little sympathy with the
policy of the Ministry of Finance.

From other sources I learned the cause of this want of sympathy. Being
Minister of Interior, and having served long in the Police Department,
M. Plehve considered that his first duty was the maintenance of public
order and the protection of the person and autocracy of his august
master. He was therefore the determined enemy of revolutionary
tendencies, in whatever garb or disguise they might appear; and as
a statesman he had to direct his attention to everything likely to
increase those tendencies in the future. Now it seemed that in the
financial policy which had been followed for some years there were
germs of future revolutionary fermentation. The peasantry we