Then took place the intimate fusion of the Russian and Austrian system of politics, occasioning the absolute triumph of Metternich; and this situation was continued at the congress of Verona under Nesselrode, from that time forth sole minister of Russia, and chief of the _chancellerie_ under Alexander. At the congress of Verona he held the pen, and all the resolutions regarding Spain were taken in concert; the diplomatic notes were drawn up by the two ministers together; Metternich wrote to the Austrian minister at Madrid, while Nesselrode, recalling the Russian ambassador, fulminated a sentence of proscription against the Cortes. It was no longer the liberal and generous Alexander they had to deal with, but an imperious prince, who, through his ministers, laid down the law in a sovereign and dogmatic manner. When M. de Villèle craftily objected for a short time to engage in an expensive and hazardous campaign, Nesselrode, without the slightest hesitation, wrote to him, in the name of the Emperor, that Russia was determined to venture every thing in order to repress the spirit of revolt in the Peninsula. The impulse was so powerful it was no longer possible to resist it. The close of Alexander's life was greatly harassed by these feelings; the sacred cause of the Greeks weighed upon his mind as a subject of remorse, and the sorrow it occasioned him was imprinted on his countenance, which now bore the appearance of ill health. Yet what was to be done? The panic of impending revolutions had seized upon his mind, and delivered him over to a thousand terrors, for his dread of the spirit of the secret societies was extreme. Liberalism filled him with alarm, he viewed it as a spectre threatening him with the seditions that might arise in his empire, and he did not comprehend that the most effectual means of employing the national effervescence of the Russians would have been to march them against Turkey for the deliverance of Greece. The causes of the unexpected death of Alexander have formed the subject of much inquiry; perhaps this acute sorrow was not entirely unconnected with it: he was a man of a deeply religious mind, with a mild disposition and a tender and impressionable heart; thus he felt deeply for the sufferings of Greece. Every stroke of a yataghan which caused the head of a woman or child to roll in the dust, among the ruins of Athens or Lacedæmon, made his heart bleed.