the sentry to open
the gate and passed out of the enclosure.

He crossed the clearing and entered the forest. The warlike tribes
themselves had trodden paths through the dense undergrowth of young
trees and ferns. Rezanov, despite Baranhov's warning, had tramped the
forest many times. It was the one thing that reconciled him to Sitka,
for there are few woods more beautiful. In spite or because of the
incessant rains, it is pervaded by a rich golden gloom, the result of
the constant rotting of the brown and yellow bark, not only of the
prostrate trees, but of the many killed by crowding and unable to seek
the earth with the natural instinct of death. And above, the green of
hemlock and spruce was perennially fresh and young, glistening and
fragrant. Here and there was a small clearing where the clans had
erected their ingenious and hideous totem poles, out of place in the
ancient beauty of the wood.

The ferns brushed his waist, the roar of the river came to his ears,
the forest had never looked more primeval, more wooing to a man
burdened with civilization, but Rezanov gave it less heed than usual,
although he had turned to it instinctively. He was occupied with a
question to which nature would turn an aloof disdainful ear. Was his
own wounded vanity at the root of his desire to humiliate Japan? Russia
was too powerful, too occupied, for the present at least, greatly to
care that her overtures and presents had been scorned. Upon her
ambassador had fallen the full brunt of that wearisome and incomparably
mortifying experience, and unfortunately the ambassador happened to be
one of the proudest and most autocratic men in her empire. No man of
Rezanov's caliber but accommodates that sort of personal vanity that
tenaciously resents a blow to the pride of which it is a part, to the
love of power it feeds. As well expect a lover without passion, a
state without corruption. Rezanov finally shrugged his shoulders and
admitted the impeachment, but at the same time he recognized that the
desire for vengeance still held, and that the tenacity of his nature, a
tenacity that had been no mean factor in the remodeling of himself from
a voluptuous young sprig of nobility into one of the most successful
business men and subjugator of other men that the Russian Empire could
show, was not likely to weaken when its very roots had been stiff with
purpose for fifteen months. Power had been Rezanov's ruling passion
for many year