And that he
himself should be the chief of these mercenary counsellors, was so far
from being charged upon Zebek as any offence or any ground of
suspicion, that his relative the Khan returned him hearty thanks for
his services, under the belief that he could have accepted this
appointment only with a view to keep out other and more unwelcome
pretenders, who would not have had the same motives of consanguinity or
friendship for executing its duties in a spirit of kindness to the
Kalmucks. The first use which he made of his new functions about the
Khan's person was to attack the Court of Russia, by a romantic villany
not easy to be credited, for those very acts of interference with the
council which he himself had prompted. This was a dangerous step: but
it was indispensable to his further advance upon the gloomy path which
he had traced out for himself. A triple vengeance was what he
meditated--1, Upon the Russian Cabinet for having undervalued his own
pretensions to the throne--2, upon his amiable rival for having
supplanted him--and 3, upon all those of the nobility who had
manifested their sense of his weakness by their neglect, or their sense
of his perfidious character by their suspicions. Here was a colossal
outline of wickedness; and by one in his situation, feeble (as it might
seem) for the accomplishment of its humblest parts, how was the total
edifice to be reared in its comprehensive grandeur? He, a worm as he
was, could he venture to assail the mighty behemoth of Muscovy, the
potentate who counted three hundred languages around the footsteps of
his throne, and from whose 'lion ramp' recoiled alike 'baptized and
infidel'--Christendom on the one side, strong by her intellect and her
organization, and the `Barbaric East' on the other, with her unnumbered
numbers? The match was a monstrous one; but in its very monstrosity
there lay this germ of encouragement, that it could not be suspected.
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