Petersburg during the last and least susceptible part of the imperial courtesan's life, the brief reign of Paul, and the two years between the accession of Alexander and the sailing of the Nadeshda. More-over, there was hardly another court of importance in Europe with which he was not familiar, and few men had had a more complete experience of life.
And the life of a courtier, a diplomat, a traveller, noble, wealthy, agreeable to women by divine right, with active enemies and a horde of flatterers, in daily contact with the meaner and more disin-genuous corners of human nature, is not conducive to a broad optimism and a sweet and immutable Christianity. Rezanov inevitably was more or less cynical and blase', and too long versed in the ways of courts and courtiers to retain more than a whim-sical tolerance of the naked truth and an apprecia-tion of its excellence as a diplomatic manoeuvre.
Nevertheless, he was by nature too impetuous ever to become under any provocation a dishonest man, and too normally a gentleman to deviate from a certain personal code of honor. He might come to California with fair words and a very definite in-tention of annexing it to Russia at the first oppor-tunity, but he was incapable of abusing the hospi-tality of the Arguellos by making love to their six-teen-year-old daughter. Had she been of the years he had assumed, he would have had less scruple in embarking upon a flirtation, both for the pastime and the use he might make of her. A Spanish beauty of twenty, still unmarried, would be more than his match. But a child, however precocious, inevitably would fall in love with the first uncom-mon stranger she met; and Rezanov, less vain than most men of his kind, and with a fundamental hu-manity that was the chief cause in his efforts to im-prove the condition of his wretched promuschleniki, had no taste for the role of heart-breaker.
But the girl had proved her timeliness; would, if trustworthy, be of further use in inclining her father and the Governor toward such of his de-signs as he had any intentions of revealing; and, weighing carefully his conversations with her, he was disposed to believe that she would screen and abet him through vanity and love of intrigue. After the dinner, in the seclusion of the sala, he had taken pains to explore for the causes of her mental ma-turity. Concha had told him of Don Jose Arguello's ambition that his children in their youth should have the education he had been forced to acquire in his manhood; he had taught them himself, and not-withstanding his piety and the disapproval of the priests, had permitted them to read the histories, travels, and biographies he received once a year from the City of Mexico. Rezanov had met Madame de Stael and other bas bleus, and given them no more of his society than politeness de-manded, but although astonished at the amount of information this young girl had assimilated, he found nothing in her manner of wearing her intel-lectual crown to offend his fastidious taste. She was wholly artless in her love of books and of dis-cussing them; and nothing in their contents had dis-turbed the sweetest innocence he had ever met. Of the little arts of coquetry she was mistress by inheri-tance and much provocation, but her unawakened inner life breathed the simplicity and purity of the elemental roses that hovered about her in his thoughts. Her very unsusceptibility made the game more dangerous; if it piqued him--and he aspired to be no more than human--he either should have to marry her, or nurse a sore spot in his conscience for the rest of his life; and for neither alternative had he the least relish.
He dismissed the subject at last with an impatient shrug. Perhaps he was a conceited ass, as his Eng-lish friends would say; perhaps the Governor would be more amenable than she had represented. No man could forecast events. It was enough to be forearmed.
But his thoughts swung to a theme as little dis-burdening. His needs, as he had confided to Con-cha, were very pressing. The dry or frozen fish, the sea dogs, the fat of whales, upon which the em-ployees of the Company were forced to subsist in the least hospitable of climes, had ravaged them with scorbutic diseases until their numbers were so reduced by death and desertion that there was dan-ger of depopulation and the consequent bankruptcy of the Company. Since June of the preceding year until his departure from New Archangel in the pre-vious month, he had been actively engaged in inspec-tion of the Company's holdings from Kamchatka to Sitka: reforming abuses, establishing schools and libraries, conceiving measures to protect the fur-bearing animals from reckless slaughter both by the promuschleniki and marauding foreigners; punishing and banishing the worst offenders against the Company's laws; encouraging the faithful, and sharing hardships with them that sent memories of former luxuries and pleasures scurrying off to the realms of fantasy. But his rule would be incom-plete and his efforts end in failure if the miserable Russians and natives in the employ of the Com-pany were not vitalized by proper food and cheered with the hope of its permanence.
