And even that, itself, seemed strangely vague,
had lost its definite character, was rendered doubtful by the theories
and the claims of the spoliators who, by a strange effect of uneasy
conscience, while strenuously denying the moral guilt of the transaction,
were always trying to throw a veil of high rectitude over the Crime. What
was most annoying to their righteousness was the fact that the nation,
stabbed to the heart, refused to grow insensible and cold. That
persistent and almost uncanny vitality was sometimes very inconvenient to
the rest of Europe also. It would intrude its irresistible claim into
every problem of European politics, into the theory of European
equilibrium, into the question of the Near East, the Italian question,
the question of Schleswig-Holstein, and into the doctrine of
nationalities. That ghost, not content with making its ancestral halls
uncomfortable for the thieves, haunted also the Cabinets of Europe, waved
indecently its bloodstained robes in the solemn atmosphere of Council-
rooms, where congresses and conferences sit with closed windows. It
would not be exorcised by the brutal jeers of Bismarck and the fine
railleries of Gorchakov.
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