Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/199

BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 1ft 7 In strife for ascendancy like that which was chap. now going on between the Czar and Lord Strat- , ford, the pain of undergoing defeat is of such a £g?£J5«i kind that the pangs of the sufferer accumulate ; SSSSd and far from being assuaged by time, they are stratford. every day less easy to bear than they were the day before. By the pomp and the declared sig- nificance of Prince Mentschikoff's mission, the Emperor Nicholas had drawn upon himself the eyes of Europe, and the presence of the religious ingredient had brought him under the gaze of many millions of his own subjects who were not commonly observers of the business of the State. And he who, in transactions thus watched by men, was preparing for him cruel discomfiture — he who kept him on the rack, and regulated his torments with cold unrelenting precision — was the old familiar enemy whom he had once refused to receive as the English Ambassador at St Peters- burg. People who knew the springs of action in the Russian capital used to say at that time that the whole ' Eastern Question,' as it was called, lay enclosed in one name — lay enclosed in the name of Lord Stratford. They acknowledged that the Emperor Nicholas could not bear the stress of our Ambassador's authority with the Torte. And, in truth, the Czar's power of endurance was drawing to a close, lie wavered and wavered again and again. He was versed in business of State, and it would seem that when his mind was turned to things temporal he truly meant to be politic and just. But in his more religious mo-