“One is a joy to me upon grounds purely personal, and I think it will please you also. As an ornament for the restored city, the Czar is about to raise a stately monument to the memory of my patriotic ancestor and his brave associate. ‘To Prince Pojarsky and Citizen Minim, from grateful Russia,’ so runs the simple and noble inscription. But, what is far better, he has just given to the Bible Society, for its storehouse and head-quarters, that great old building which was formerly the office of the secret police. Think of Bibles being laid up in what used to be the torture-chamber! How quickly and how gloriously the rays of the Sun of Righteousness are rising upon us! They are flooding with light even those dark places of the earth which used to be the habitations of cruelty.” “But is there not something else still to be wished for, Ivan? Those free Bibles you speak of, should you not wish to see them read and loved by free peasants?” “That is coming too,” said Ivan, with rapt look and confident voice. “Every one who knows the Czar knows that his cherished dream--his favourite, his ruling idea--is now, as it has ever been, the emancipation of the serfs.[72] Through the facilities he has afforded and the encouragement he has given, many have been freed already. Count Sergius Romanzoff, for instance, has given liberty to all his serfs.” “And why not Prince Ivan Pojarsky?” asked Clémence in a low voice, as she laid her hand on his arm and looked earnestly into his face. “You utter the voice of my own heart, Clémence. Often have I thought of this. But--” He broke off his unfinished sentence, and began to pace the room with rapid footsteps. Clémence took up the last word. “But--there are many difficulties,” she said. “One is quite sufficient, for the present,” Ivan pursued. “The people of Nicolofsky are not fit for greater freedom than they have now; they would not know how to use it. Let us train them for it,” he added as he stopped before her chair. “Which already we are trying to do, are we not?” asked Clémence. “Yes,” he said. “That is God’s work for us. Part of it. There is work here, too--noble, blessed work. How good it is of our Father in heaven to cast our lot in such times as these, Clémence. Surely they are the last times, when ‘the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it;’ when ‘they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know him, from the least to the greatest.’--Surely we shall live to see that blessed consummation, you and I.”