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

44THE HEREDITARY GRAND-DUKE.

and a kindness which I should be very ungrateful to forget; no doubt he thought I had too much to say to dare to answer; and anticipating some evasion which might have betrayed my embarrassment, and compromised the cause I desired to plead, " My mother," he said, with vivacity, "who ever asked a child of fifteen years what he had done in politics ? "

This answer, full of sense and of good feeling, extricated me from the difficulty, but it put an end to the conversation. If I might dare to interpret the silence of the empress, I should say that this was her thought—"What could now be done, in Russia, with a pardoned Pole? He would always be an object of envy to the old Russians, and he would only inspire his new masters with distrust. His health and life would be lost in the trials to which he would have to be exposed in order to tc¾t his fidelity : and if, at length, they came to the c<¯·ii elusion that he might be trusted, they would only despise him. Besides, what could I do for this young man ? I have so little influence ! "

I do not believe I much deceive myself in saying, that such were the thoughts of the empress ; such were also pretty nearly mine. "We tacitly agreed in concluding that of two evils, the least for a gentleman who had lost both his fellow citizens and his comrades in arms, was to remain far from the land which had given him birth ; the worst of all conditions would be that of a man who should live as a stranger in his own home.

On a sign from the empress, the Grand-duke,

Madame-, her daughter, and myself, re-entered

the cottage. I should have wished to have found less