effects of which are surprising ; whilst in Russia, the one is as little known as the other. A Spaniard lives on love, a Russian lives on calculation ; a Spaniard relates every thing, and if he has nothing to relate, he invents ; a Russian conceals every thing, or if he has nothing to conceal, he is still silent, that he may appear discreet: Spain is infested with brigands, but they rob only on the road; the Russian roads are safe, but you will be plundered infallibly in the houses : Spain is full of the ruins and the memories of every century; Russia looks back only upon yesterday, her history is rich in nothing but promises: Spain is studded with mountains, whose forms vary at every step taken by the traveller; Russia is but a single unchanging scene, extending from one end of a plain to the other : the sun illumines Seville, and vivifies the whole peninsula ; the mists veil the distances in Petersburg, which remain dim during even the finest summer evenings. In short, the two countries are the very opposite of each other ; they differ as do day and night, fire and ice, north and south.
He must have sojourned in that solitude without
SPAIN AND RUSSIA.353
repose, that prison without leisure which is called Russia, to feel all the liberty enjoyed in the other European countries, whatever form of government they may have adopted. It cannot be too emphatically repeated: liberty is wanted in every thing Russian; unless it be in the commerce of Odessa. The emperor, who is endowed with prophetic tact, little loves the spirit of independence that pervades that city, the prosperity of which is due to the intelligence and integrity of a Frenchman * : it is, however, the only point in his vast dominions where men may with sincerity bless his reign.
If ever your sons should be discontented with France, try my receipt; tell them to go to Russia. It is a useful journey for every foreigner : whoever has well examined that country will be content to live anywhere else. It is always well to know that a society exists where no happiness is possible* because, by a law of his nature, man cannot be happy unless he is free.
Such a recollection renders the traveller less fastidious ; and, returning to his own hearth, he can say of his country what a man of mind once said of himself :
* The Duke de Richelieu, minister of Louis XVIII.
APPENDIX.
November, 1842. During the course of this year, chance has brought me into the company of two individuals who served in our armies during the campaign of 1812, and who both lived in Russia for some years after having been made prisoners there. The one is a Frenchman, now professor of the Russian language at Paris ; his name is M. Girard; the other is an Italian, M. Grassini, brother of the celebrated singer whose beauty once caused great sensation in Europe, and whose admirable dramatic and musical talents have contributed to the glory of the modern Italian school.
These two individuals have recounted to me facts which, singularly agreeing as they do, although the parties have not the slightest knowledge of each other even by name, have appeared to me sufficiently interesting to merit publication.
The following is the summary of M. Girard's relation.
He was made prisoner during the retreat, and immediately sent, with 3000 other Frenchmen, under charge of a body of Cossacks, into the interior of the empire, where the prisoners were dispersed among the different governments.
The cold became daily more intense. Dying of hunger and fatigue, the unfortunate men were often obliged to stop on the road, until numerous and violent blows had done the office of food for them, and inspired them with, strength to march on until they fell dead. At every stoppage, some of these scarcely clad and famished beings were left upon the snow. When they onee fell, the frost glued them to earth, and they never rose again. Even their ferocious guards were horrified at their excess of suffering.
Devoured by vermin, consumed by fever and want, carrying everywhere with them contagion, they became objects of terror to the villagers, among whose abodes they were made to stop. They advanced, by dint of blows, towards the places destined
356
APPENDIX.
for their taking rest; and it was still with blows that they were received there, without being suffered to approach persons, or even to enter houses. Some were seen redueed to such a state, that, in their furious despair, they fell upon each other with stones, logs of wood and their own hands ; and those who came alive
out of the conflict devoured the limbs of the dead ! !!
To these horrible excesses did the inhumanity of the Eussians drive our countrymen.
It has not been forgotten that at the very same time, Germany gave a different example to the Christian world. The Protestants of Frankfort still remember the devoted charity of the Bishop of Mayenee, and the Italian Catholies reeolleet with gratitude the succour they received among the Protestants of Saxony.
At night, in the bivouaes, the men who felt themselves about to die rose in terror to struggle, standing, against the death agony ; surprised whilst in its contortions by the frost, they remained supported against the walls, stiff and frozen. The last sweat turned to iee over their emaeiated limbs; and they were found in the morning, their eyes open, and their bodies fixed and eongealed in convulsive attitudes, from which they were snatched only to be burnt. The foot then eame away from the anele more easily than it is, when living, lifted from the soil. When daylight appeared, their comrades, on raising their heads, beheld themselves under the~guard of a circle of yet scarcely lifeless statues, who appeared posted round the eamp like sentinels of another world. The horror of these awakings cannot be described.
Every morning, before the departure of the column, the Ptussians burnt the dead; and — shall I say it — they sometimes burnt the dying!
All this M. Girard has seen ; these are the sufferings he has shai`ed, and, favoured by youth, survived. Frightful as the facts are, they do not appear to me more so than a multitude of other reeitals attested by historians : but what I consider as inexplicable, and almost incredible, is the silenee of a Frenchman escaped from this inhuman land, and again in his own eountry.
M. Girard would never publish the aeeount of his sufferings, through respect, he says, for the memory of the Emperor Alexander, who retained him nearly ten years in Russia, and employed him as French master in the Imperial schools. How
APPENDIX.357
many arbitrary acts, how many frauds, has he not witnessed in those vast establishments ! Nothing, however, has been able to induce him to break silence, and to proclaim to Europe these glaring abuses.
Before permitting him to return to France, the Emperor Alexander met him one day during a visit to some provincial college. After addressing to him some gracious words on his long expressed desire to quit Russia, he at
