It is not wholly fanciful to talk of the White Czar: for Russia even destruction has a deathly softness as of snow.

Her ideas are often innocent and even childish; like the idea of Peace.

The phrase Holy Alliance was a beautiful truth for the Czar, though only a blasphemous jest for his rascally allies, Metternich and Castlereagh.

Austria, though she had lately fallen to a somewhat treasonable toying with heathens and heretics of Turkey and Prussia, still retained something of the old Catholic comfort for the soul.
Priests still bore witness to that mighty mediaeval institution which even its enemies concede to be a noble nightmare.

All their hoary political iniquities had not deprived them of that dignity.