Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

216 FRENCHMEN OF THE NEW SCHOOL.

political saturnalia; but, once again, the acts of violence are isolated, and do not disturb the general quiet. That quiet is the more stable, and appears the more firmly established, because it resembles death: it is only living things that can be exterminated. In Russia, respect for despotism is confounded with the idea of eternity.

I find several Frenchmen assembled together at Nijni. Notwithstanding my passionate love for France, for that land which, in my vexation with the extravagancies of its inhabitants, I have so often abandoned with the vow never to return, but to which I return always, and where I hope to die, — notwithstanding this blind patriotism, I have never ceased, since I first travelled and encountered in foreign lands a crowd of countrymen, to recognise the impertinence of the young French, and to feel astonished on observing the strong relief in which our faults stand forth among foreigners. If I speak only of the younger men, it is because at their age the stamp upon the mind, being less worn away by the rubs of life, the exhibition of character is the more striking. It must then be owned that our young countrymen invite a laugh at their own expense, by the sincerity with which they imagine that they dazzle the simple men of other nations. French superiority, a superiority so well established in their eyes that it does not require even to be proved, is the axiom upon which they support themselves. This unshaking faith in their own personal merit, this self-love, so completely at ease, that it would become ingenuous through its very confidence, if so much credulity did not generally unite itself, in hideous combination, with scoffing and