A triple vengeance was what he meditated:
1, upon the Russian Cabinet, for having undervalued his
own pretensions to the throne; 2, upon his amiable rival,
for having supplanted him; and 3, upon all those of the
nobility who had manifested their sense of his weakness
by their neglect or their sense of his perfidious character 5
by their suspicions. Here was a colossal outline of wickedness;
and by one in his situation, feeble (as it might
seem) for the accomplishment of its humblest parts, how
was the total edifice to be reared in its comprehensive
grandeur? He, a worm as he was, could he venture to 10
assail the mighty behemoth of Muscovy, the potentate
who counted three hundred languages around the footsteps
of his throne, and from whose "lion ramp" recoiled
alike "baptized and infidel"--Christendom on the one
side, strong by her intellect and her organization, and the 15
"barbaric East" on the other, with her unnumbered
numbers? The match was a monstrous one; but in its
very monstrosity there lay this germ of encouragement--that
it could not be suspected. The very hopelessness
of the scheme grounded his hope; and he resolved to 20
execute a vengeance which should involve as it were, in
the unity of a well-laid tragic fable, all whom he judged
to be his enemies. That vengeance lay in detaching from
the Russian empire the whole Kalmuck nation and breaking
up that system of intercourse which had thus far been 25
beneficial to both.
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