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

forgive my parents for the part they had taken at the commencement of the revolution, as could the Terrorists for the moderation of their republican patriotism.

The Girondists, who were the Doctrinaires of this era, would have defended the cause of my father ; but that party was annihilated, or had, at least, disappeared since the triumph of Robespierre.

My mother, therefore, found herself in a more isolated position than most of the Jacobin victims. Having devotedly embraced the opinions of her husband, she had been obliged to renounce the society in which her life had been passed, and she had not sought entrance into any other. The remains of those circles which had constituted the world of that period — the world, that is to say, of the Faubourg Saint Germain —were not propitiated by our misfortunes : and high aristocrats had well nigh come forth from their hiding-places to join in the chorus of the Marsellaise, when they heard cried in the streets the condemnation of the traitor Custine.

The moderate reform party—the men whose love of France exists independently of the form of government adopted by the French — tin's party, which is now a nation, was not then represented in the country. My father died a martyr in the cause of that unborn nation; and my mother, when only twenty-two years old, had to undergo all the fatal consequences of her husband's virtue — a virtue too lofty to be appreciated by men who could not understand its motives. The energetic moderation of my father was ill understood by his cotemporaries, and his wronged memory attached to the person of his wife, and followed her even to the tomb. Identified