Alexander I, whom his rival, Napoleon, called 'a Greek of the Late
Empire'. 'Do we not reproach a man of history placed at the very
height of the human scale, shining with rays of glory, a man subject
to the powerful influences of intrigue, enticement and flattery, one
who feels himself in every moment of his life responsible for any-
thing that may happen in Europe, a real and living man, always
drawn towards ideals of beauty and truth; do we not reproach this
figure from the century just past, not for having lacked virtues, but
for having opinions on the destiny of humanity which differ from
those of a professor occupied from his youth only in writing?'

This eloquent tirade needs no comment. I have taken my hero
such as he was, a child of his time, of his surroundings. I have taken
him as he was seen by a Pole who was first his page and afterwards
his political enemy, 'a bizarre mixture of defects and qualities, of
meanness and greatness, brutal and chivalrous, courageous to fool-
hardiness and faint-hearted as a poltroon, just, yet tyrannical,
generous and cruel, fond of ostentation and liking simplicity'. This
judgment of Nicholas by Prince Lubomirski I accept as my own.

In choosing Nicholas I, in preference to any other figure from
Russia's past, I have been moved by the following considerations.
First of all, it seemed to me that his portrait would complete, like
the third volet of a triptych, those I have previously painted of
Baron de Stein and Prince Metternich. In themselves, these three
men--the autocrat of all the Russias, the man who revived Prussia
and the great Chancellor of Austria--do they not represent the
political life of Central and Eastern Europe in the first half of the
nineteenth century, an epoch from which spring the conflicts of the
contemporary world?

I have ascertained also that, unlike the other great Russian
sovereigns, Nicholas has had no biographer. The well-known work
of N. Schilder (besides being based on incomplete documentation
and hampered by censorship) remains unfinished: the account goes
no further than 1831. That of the Baltic Th. Schiemann is not a
biography, but a History of Russia in the Reign of Nicholas: and the
author 'a champion of Germanism against overweening Slavism'
according to his friend, William II's own words, ¹ could not be
objective. During recent years, many Soviet publications have
thrown a new light on the revolutionary episodes in his reign
and on social conditions in Russia between 1825 and 1856, also on
the dramatic end of my hero. Researches made in 1938 and 1939
in the Secret Archives of Vienna have enabled me to complete my
information by drawing on valuable unpublished items found in

-viii-