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

cow, he left the holy city of the Russians a fugitive, thenceforward condemned to mistrust Fortune, whose inconstancy he once imagined he had vanquished.

The words cited by the Abbe de Pradt fill up, it appears to me, the measure of cruelty that may enter into the inordinate ambition of a soldier. " There is but one step between the sublime and the ridiculous," cried the hero, when at Warsaw, and without an army. And why did he say this ? In that solemn moment he thought only of the figure that he was going to make in the article of a newspaper ! The corpses of the men who perished for him were surely anything but ridiculous! The colossal vanity of the Emperor Napoleon could only be struck by the jeers with which some might hail a disaster, that will nevertheless make the nations tremble for ages, and the simple recollection of which has, for thirty years, made war impossible to Europe. To be occupied with self in so solemn a moment was to make vanity criminal. The sentence quoted by the Archbishop of Malines is the heart-cry of an egotist, who for one hour was master of the world, but could never be master of himself. That trait of inhumanity, displayed at such a moment, will be noted by history when it shall have had time to become equitable.

I could have wished to summon before me the imagery and decoration of this epic scene, this most astonishing event of modern times; but all here strive to bury great and stirring deeds in oblivion. A nation of slaves dreads its own heroism; the people, naturally and necessarily discreet, seek only for the shelter of insignificance. I have not met one с 3