"To the health of my august brother the Czar!" They drained their glasses and refilled them. "In truth, the Czar stands in sore need of that fervent aspiration!" quoth Araktseieff, with a deep sigh. "What! is he seriously ill, then? What ails him?" "He is suffering from the malady hardest to cure--melancholia. All the doctors' arts are of no avail. For months together the Czar gets no sleep, save a short, unrefreshing siesta at noon. By night and day he is tortured by all kinds of fancies. He is weary of life; and what wonder? Wherever he looks he sees nothing but ruin and decay in all that which he so painfully built up. The dreams he cherished are dispelled. Every institution for promoting liberty of thought and action which he called into life has he been himself compelled, one by one, to annul and abolish. And he has no spirit or energy left to pull himself together and devise new schemes. He feels that he has aroused disaffection, and has not the moral strength to become a tyrant and quell that disaffection. He knows himself to be surrounded by assassins, and has not energy to take firm hold of the only weapon which remains to him. Moreover, his domestic happiness is ruined. Your Imperial Highness knows the catastrophe. The Czar's spirit is clouded by the weight of religious depression; he looks upon himself as an irremediable sinner, condemned alike by God and man. Shudderingly surveying the fatality, he is hurrying it on. A mental condition such as this must in the end undermine the strongest constitution. The slightest indisposition might prove fatal at any moment; and he takes not the slightest care of himself. He will suffer no physician about him, and keeps his ailments secret. It is my firm belief that in his heart is the seat of disease, and that the heart is wounded to death." "My poor brother!" muttered the Grand Duke, resting his head on his hand. "That noble, powerful fellow, by whose side I was at the victory of Leipsic, when he concluded peace with Napoleon on the island in the Niemen, and in the triumphal entry into Paris; and in Vienna, at the Congress; and wherever we went I heard people whisper, 'There he is, that splendid-looking man beside the deformed one!' Light and shadow; we were their true exponents." "We must be prepared for the worst. The feeble flame which still feeds that light needs but a breath to extinguish it, and then the whole country will be given up to most terrible anarchy. The ground is undermined by countless conspiracies; we are menaced on all sides. Who can withstand the flood when the gates of heaven are opened? The Czar has no children. Who is to succeed him?" "He whom the Czar appoints." "And supposing he appoints no one? It is, indeed, impossible to get him to do so. The law, he says, speaks plainly enough--it is the Czarevitch who succeeds the Czar."