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

92 PARALLEL BETWEEN FRENCH AND

racy of the principal facts; the reader can put as much or as little faith in them as he pleases; for my own part, I always believe what people whom I do not know say to me. The suspicion of falsehold never enters my mind until after the proof.

The young Russian, who is the author of the fragment, wishing to justify, by the memory of the horrors of our revolution, the ferocity of his own countrymen, has cited an act of French cruelty, the massacre of M. de Belzunce at Caen. He might have increased his list: Mademoiselle de Sombreuil forced to drink a glass of blood to redeem the life of her father; the heroic death of the archbishop of Aries, and of his glorious companions in martyrdom, within the cloisters of the Carmelite convent at Paris; the massacres of Lyons; the executions, by drowning, at Nantes, surnamed by Carrier, the republican marriages ; and many other atrocities which historians have not even recorded, might serve to prove that human ferocity only sleeps among nations even the most civilised. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the cold, methodical, and abiding cruelty of the Mugics, and the passing frenzy of the French. These latter, during the war which they carried on against God and humanity, were not in their natural state; the mood of blood had changed their character; and the extravagances of passion ruled over all their acts; for never were they less free than at the epoch when everytlùng that was done among them was done in the name of liberty. We are, on the contrary, going to see the Russians murder each other without belying their characters; it is still a duty which they are performing. '