he could have accepted this appointment only with a view
to keep out other and more unwelcome pretenders, who
would not have had the same motives of consanguinity or 25
friendship for executing its duties in a spirit of kindness
to the Kalmucks. The first use which he made of his
new functions about the Khan's person was to attack the
Court of Russia, by a romantic villainy not easily to be
credited, for those very acts of interference with the 30
council which he himself had prompted. This was a
dangerous step: but it was indispensable to his farther
advance upon the gloomy path which he had traced out
for himself. 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