not yet enlightened these simple tribes as to that result.  And that he himself should be the chief of these mercenary councillors was so far from being charged upon Zebek as any offence or any 20 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 25 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 villainy not easily to be credited, for those very acts of interference with the 30 council which he himself had prompted.  This was a dangerous step:  but it was indispensable to his farther 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 5 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 10 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 15 “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.  The very hopelessness of the scheme grounded his hope; and he resolved to 20 execute a vengeance which should involve as it were, in the unity of a well-laid tragic fable, all whom he judged to be his enemies.  That vengeance lay in detaching from the Russian empire the whole Kalmuck nation and breaking up that system of intercourse which had thus far been 25 beneficial to both.  This last was a consideration which moved him but little.  True it was that Russia to the Kalmucks had secured lands and extensive pasturage; true it was that the Kalmucks reciprocally to Russia had furnished a powerful cavalry; but the latter loss would be 30 part of his triumph, and the former might be more than compensated in other climates, under other sovereigns.  Here was a scheme which, in its final accomplishment, would avenge him bitterly on the Czarina, and in the course of