mer would have no dreaming
in his dominion. This mean man must ever be looking at his hoard.
The chief interest in the study of a human life lies around the
inexplicable. If we were quite consistent we should be entirely dull. No
one knows why this liberal autocrat was mean to Poland.

From Warsaw, the city which has been commanded to stand still, Cartoner
travelled across the plains of endless snow towards the north. He found
as he progressed a hundred signs of the awakening. The very faces of
the people had changed since he last looked upon them only a few
years earlier. These people were now a nation, conscious of their own
strength. They had fought in a great and victorious war, not because
they had been commanded to fight, but because they wanted to. They had
followed with understanding the diplomatic warfare that succeeded the
signing of the treaty of San Stefano. They had won and lost. They were
men, and no longer driven beasts.

It was evening when Cartoner arrived at St. Petersburg. The long
northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was
reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of
the Admiralty shot up into a cloudless sky.

The Warsaw Railway Station is in a quiet part of the town, and the
streets through which Cartoner drove in his hired sleigh were almost
deserted. It was the hour of the promenade in the Summer Garden, or the
drive in the Newski Prospect, so that all the leisured class were in
another quarter of the town. St. Petersburg is, moreover, the most
spacious capital in the world, where there is more room than the
inhabitants can occupy, where the houses are too large and the streets
too wide. The Catherine Canal was, of course, frozen, and its broken
surface had a dirty, ill-kept air, while the snow was spotted with
rubbish and refuse, and trodden down into numberless paths and
crossings. Cartoner looked at it indifferently. It had no history yet.
The streets were silent beneath their cloak of snow. All St. Petersburg
is silent for nearly half the year, and is the quietest city in the
world, excepting Venice.

The sleigh sped across the Nicholas Bridge to the Vasili Island. The
river showed no signs of spring yet. The usual pathways across it were
still in use. The Vasili Ostrov is less busy than that greater part of
the city which lies across the river. Behind the academy of Arts, and
leading out of the Bolshoi Prospect, are a number of paralle