nd then the other into his
enterprise.[235]

The young Czar's disposition was at that period restless and unstable,
free from the passionate caprices of his ill-fated father, and attuned
by the fond efforts of the Swiss democrat Laharpe, to the loftiest
aspirations of the France of 1789. Yet the son of Paul I. could hardly
free himself from the instincts of a line of conquering Czars; his
frank blue eyes, his graceful yet commanding figure, his high broad
forehead and close shut mouth gave promise of mental energy; and his
splendid physique and love of martial display seemed to invite him to
complete the campaigns of Catherine II. against the Turks, and to wash
out in the waves of the Danube the remorse which he still felt at his
unwitting complicity in a parricidal plot. Between his love of liberty
and of foreign conquest he for the present wavered, with a strange
constitutional indecision that marred a noble character and that
yielded him a prey more than once to a masterful will or to seductive
projects. He is the Janus of Russian history. On the one side he faces
the enormous problems of social and political reform, and yet he
steals many a longing glance towards the dome of St. Sofia. This
instability in his nature has been thus pointedly criticised by his
friend Prince Czartoryski:[236]

"Grand ideas of the general good, generous sentiments, and the
desire to sacrifice to them a part of the imperial authority, had
really occupied the Emperor's mind, but they were rather a young
man's fancies than a grown man's decided will. The Emperor liked
forms of liberty, as he liked the theatre: it gave him pleasure and
flattered his vanity to see the appearances of free government in
his Empire: but all he wanted in this respect was forms and
appearances: he did not expect them to become realities. He would
willingly have agreed that every man should be free, on the
condition that he should voluntarily do only what the Emperor
wished."

This later judgment of the well-known Polish nationalist is probably
embittered by the disappointments which he experienced at the Czar's
hands; but it expresses the feeling of most observers of Alexander's
early career, and it corresponds with the conclusion arrived at by
Napoleon's favourite aide-de-camp, Duroc, who went to congratulate the
young Czar on his accession and to entice him into oriental
schemes--that there was nothing t