and might have anticipated the 15 most pointed hostility.  But it was not so:  such are the caprices in human affairs that he was even, in a moderate sense, popular—­a benefit which wore the more cheering aspect and the promises of permanence, inasmuch as he owed it exclusively to his personal qualities of kindness 20 and affability, as well as to the beneficence of his government.  On the other hand, to balance this unlooked-for prosperity at the outset of his reign, he met with a rival in popular favor—­almost a competitor—­in the person of Zebek-Dorchi, a prince with considerable pretensions to 25 the throne, and, perhaps it might be said, with equal pretensions.  Zebek-Dorchi was a direct descendant of the same royal house as himself, through a different branch.  On public grounds, his claim stood, perhaps, on a footing equally good with that of Oubacha, whilst his personal 30 qualities, even in those aspects which seemed to a philosophical observer most odious and repulsive, promised the most effectual aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer or a conspirator, and were generally fitted to win a popular support precisely in those points where Oubacha was most defective.  He was much superior in external appearance to his rival on the throne, and so far better qualified to win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous people; whilst his dark intellectual qualities of Machiavelian 5 dissimulation, profound hypocrisy, and perfidy which knew no touch of remorse, were admirably calculated to sustain any ground which he might win from the simple-hearted people with whom he had to deal and from the frank carelessness of his unconscious competitor. 10

At the very outset of his treacherous career, Zebek-Dorchi was sagacious enough to perceive that nothing could be gained by open declaration of hostility to the reigning prince:  the choice had been a deliberate act on the part of Russia, and Elizabeth Petrowna was not the 15 person to recall her own favors with levity or upon slight grounds.  Openly, therefore, to have declared his enmity toward his relative on the throne, could have had no effect but that of arming suspicions against his own ulterior purposes in a quarter where it was most essential to his 20 interest that, for the present, all suspicions should be hoodwinked.  Accordingly, after much meditation, the course he took for opening his snares was this:—­He raised a rumor that his own life was in danger from the plots of several Saissang (that is, Kalmuck nobles), who 25 were leagued together under an oath to assassinate him; and immediately after, assuming a well-counterfeited alarm, he fled to Tcherkask, followed by sixty-five tents.  From this place he kept up a correspondence with the Imperial Court, and, by way of soliciting his cause more 30 effectually, he soon repaired in person to St. Petersburg.  Once admitted to personal conferences with the cabinet,