Yet Moscow moved at last.  Some nobles who had not yet arrived at the callous period; some professors in the University who had not yet arrived at the heavy period, breathed life into the mass, dragged on the timid, fought off the malignant.  The movement had soon a force which the retrograde party at Moscow dared not openly resist.  So they sent answers to St. Petersburg, apparently favorable; but wrapped in their phrases were hints of difficulties, reservations, impossibilities.  All this studied suggestion of difficulties profited the reactionists nothing.  They were immediately informed that the imperial mind was made up, that the business of the Muscovite nobility was now to arrange that the serf be freed in twelve years, and put in possession of homestead and enclosure.

The next movement of the retrograde party was to misunderstand everything.  The plainest things were found to need a world of debate; the simplest things became entangled; the noble assemblies played solemnly a ludicrous game of cross-purposes.  Straightway came a notice from the Emperor which, stripped of official verbiage, said that they must understand.  This set all in motion again.  Imperial notices were sent to province after province, explanatory documents were issued, good men and strong were set to talk and work.

The nobility of Moscow made another move.  To scare back the advancing forces of emancipation, they elected, as provincial leaders, three nobles bearing the greatest names of old Russia and haters of the new ideas.  To defeat these came a successor of St. Gregory and St. Bavon, one who accepted the thought that when God advances great ideas the Church must marshal them.  Philarete, Metropolitan of Moscow, upheld emancipation and condemned its foes; his earnest eloquence carried all.  The work progressed unevenly—­nobles in different governments differed in plan and aim—­an assembly of delegates was brought together at St. Petersburg to combine and perfect a resultant plan under the eye of the Emperor.  The Grand Council of the Empire, too, was set at the work.  It was a most unpromising body, yet the Emperor’s will stirred it.

The opposition now made the most brilliant stroke of its campaign.  Just as James II of England prated of toleration and planned the enslavement of all thought, so now the bigoted plotters against emancipation began to prate of constitutional liberty.  But Alexander held right on.  It was even hinted that visions of a constitutional monarchy pleased him.  But then came tests of Alexander’s strength far more trying.  Masses of peasants, hearing vague news of emancipation—­learning, doubtless, from their masters’ own spiteful lips that the Emperor was endeavoring to tear away property in serfs—­took the masters at their word, and determined to help the Emperor.  They rose in insurrection.  To the bigoted serf-owners this was a godsend.  They paraded it in all lights; therewith they threw life into all the old commonplaces on the French Revolution; timid men of good intentions wavered.  The Czar would surely now be scared back.