But, on the other hand, there would seem to be equal reason for attributing to him, in these latter days, a fearful mass of evil. To say nothing of the policy of Russia in Poland and elsewhere, her dealings with Finland thus far form one of the blackest spots on the history of the empire. Whether he originated this iniquity or not is uncertain; but when, in 1892, I first saw the new Russian cathedral rising on the heights above Helsingfors,--a structure vastly more imposing than any warranted by the small number of the "orthodox" in Finland,--with its architecture of the old Muscovite type, symbolical of fetishism, I could not but recognize his hand in it. It seemed clear to me that here was the beginning of religious aggression on the Lutheran Finlanders, which must logically be followed by political and military aggression; and, in view of his agency in this as in everything reactionary, I did not wonder at the attempt to assassinate him not long afterward. During my recent stay in Germany he visited me at the Berlin Embassy. He was, as of old, apparently gentle, kindly, interested in literature, not interested to any great extent in current Western politics. This gentle, kindly manner of his brought back forcibly to my mind a remark of one of the most cultivated women I met in Russia, a princess of ancient lineage, who ardently desired reasonable reforms, and who, when I mentioned to her a report that Pobedonostzeff was weary of political life, and was about to retire from office in order to devote himself to literary pursuits, said: "Don't, I beg of you, tell me that; for I have always noticed that whenever such a report is circulated, it is followed by some new scheme of his, even more infernal than those preceding it." So much for the man who, during the present reign, seems one of the main agents in holding Russian policy on the road to ruin. He is indeed a study. The descriptive epithet which clings to him--"the Torquemada of the nineteenth century"--he once discussed with me in no unkindly spirit; indeed, in as gentle a spirit as can well be conceived. His life furnishes a most interesting study in churchmanship, in statesmanship, and in human nature, and shows how some of the men most severely condemned by modern historians--great persecutors, inquisitors, and the like--may have based their actions on theories the world has little understood, and may have had as little conscious ferocity as their more tolerant neighbors. CHAPTER XXXVII WALKS AND TALES WITH TOLSTOI--MARCH, 1894