A word will clear up this seeming paradox. Zeneida knew too well that he who united his fate to hers must inevitably meet some dark doom, in the background of which loomed the scaffold. Finland had been reduced to subjection by the same power against which these secret societies were waging war, and Zeneida could still remember her mother's tears, and the plain black coffin brought by stealth to her home one dark night, wherein lay the corpse of a headless man for whom they dared not even mourn. Only when she was grown up had she learned that that man was her father. She loved Pushkin far too dearly to lead him on that perilous path on which men risk their heads. She had dreamed of a happier, sunnier lot for him. She had long detected in the wild, restless youth that genius that had not been given him to make the lion of a lady's boudoir--a genius which belonged, not to Russia only, but to the whole world. A poet was not thus to be wasted. Why load the gun with a charge of diamonds when common lead would answer the purpose equally well, nay, better! "Gentlemen," said Zeneida, addressing those assembled. "I will first request our brother Ryleieff to read to us the verses we are to spread among the people. To prepare the minds of the people is, indeed, the main object." (General applause.) Ryleieff, the poet, a fair, slim, handsome young man, here rising, produced the verses he had written. It was a fine, noble-toned poem, perfectly rhythmical, and true to every rule of composition. The rhetorical warmth rising gradually to an impassioned climax, the under-current expressing that deep spirit of yearning melancholy which harmonizes so entirely with the spirit of the people. The poem recited, all united to congratulate the youthful Tyrtæus; while Zeneida, with eyes filled with tears, kissed him on both cheeks. Pushkin, annoyed, looked away. For a woman to kiss a man is the accepted custom in Russian society. Ghedimin scarcely heeded Zeneida's action, and he certainly had the best right to demur; but Pushkin was plainly annoyed by it. He envied Ryleieff: envied him the kiss; how much more the poem which answered its purpose--_faute de mieux_! "The verses are splendid!" exclaimed Prince Ghedimin. "We will have a million copies of them struck off in Lunin's press, and distributed among the peasants." "You forget, Prince," put in Zeneida, "that our peasants cannot read. I would suggest it were more practical to have the poem set to music, that it might be diffused more rapidly among them. In that way it would pass from field to field; mowers, reapers, wagoners, would carry it from village to village, and what is once sung among them never dies out. In our Finnish _Volkslieder_ has lived the history of the nation, the traditions of its historical life, its freedom. These no man can take away. The _Marseillaise_ alone raised an army in France." "But to whom confide the setting of it to music?" asked the Prince.