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my keepers will kill me to avenge the honour of their country. Human self-love is so inconsistent, that men are capable of assassinating a fellow-being to prove to others that they are not inhuman."
" You are perfectly right: but all that you tell me by no means causes me to change my opinion respecting the character of the Russians."
" They obliged us to travel in companies. We slept near the villages, the entrance of which was refused us on account of the hospital fever that followed us. In the evening, we stretched ourselves on the ground, wrapped in our cloaks, between two large fires. In the morning, before recommencing our march, our guard counted the dead, and, instead of burying them, which would have cost too much time and trouble, on account of the hardness and depth of the ice and snow, they burnt them, thinking thus to stop the contagion ; body and clothes were burnt together: but, will you believe it ? more than once, men still alive were thrown into the flames ! Reanimated by pain, these wretched creatures concluded their lives with the screams and agonies of the stake! "
" What horrors ! "
" Many other atrocities were committed. Every night the rigour of the frost decimated our companies. Whenever any deserted dwelling could be found near the entrance of the towns, they obliged us to lodge there; but not being able to make fires except in certain parts of these buildings, the nights we passed there were no better than those passed in the open air with fires all around us. Many of our people consequently died in the rooms, for want of means to warm themselves."
" But why did they make you journey during the winter ? "
" We might have communicated disease to the neighbourhood of Moscow. I have often seen the Russian soldiers dragging the dead, by cords fastened round their ancles, down from the second story of the edifices in which we were herded. Their heads followed, striking and resounding against every step, from the top of the house to the bottom. 'It is of no consequence,' they said, ' they are dead.'"
" And you consider that humane ? "
" I only tell you what I have seen : sometimes even worse things happened; for I have seen an end made of the living by
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this treatment; the blood of their wounded heads, left upon the stairs, has furnished hideous proofs of the ferocity of the Rus-`ian soldiers : I ought to observe also, that sometimes an officer was present at these brutal executions. Such things I and my companions saw daily without making any protest; so greatly does misery brutalise men ! It will be my fate to-morrow, I thought; and this community of danger put my conscience at rest, and favoured my inertia."
" It appears to me still to continue, since you could be witness of all these facts, and remain silent for twenty-eight years."
" I employed the two years of my captivity in carefully writing my memoirs. I completed two volumes of the most curious and extraordinary facts that have ever been printed on the subject; I described the arbitrary system of which we were the victims; the cruelty of the tyrannical noblemen who aggravated our miseries, and who surpassed in brutality the common people; and the consolations and relief we received from benevolent noblemen ; I showed chance and caprice disposing of the lives of prisoners as well as of natives: in short, I said everything."
k' Well ? "
" "Well! I burnt my narrative before passing the Russian frontier, when I was permitted to return to Italy."
" It was a crime to do so! "
•· I was searched : had my papers been seized, I should have been condemned to the knout, and sent to finish my life in Siberia, where my misfortune would have no better served the cause of humanity than my silence serves it here."
" I cannot forgive you for this resignation."
" You forget that it has saved my life, and that my dying would have done good to nobody."
" But you might, since your return, have again written out your narrative."
" I could not have done it with the same exactitude : I no longer believe in my own recollections."
" Where did you pass your two years of captivity ? "
" As soon as I reached a town where there was a superior officer, I asked permission to serve in the Russian army; this was to avoid the journey to Siberia. My request was noticed;
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and, after some delay, I was sent to Toula, where I obtained the situation of tutor in the family of the governor. I passed two years under his roof."
" How did you live during that time ? "
" My pupil was a boy of twelve years, whom I loved, and who also became very fond of me. He told me that his father was a widower, and that he had bought, at Moscow, a female peasant, whom he had made his concubine; and that this woman rendered their household very uncomfortable."
" What kind of man was this governor ? "
" A tyrant of the melo-dramatic order. He made dignity consist in silence. During the two ý%ars that I dined at his table we never once talked together. He had a blind man for a fool, whom he caused to sing during the whole repast, and encouraged to talk before me against the French, the army, and the prisoners. I knew enough Russian to understand some of these brutal and indecent jests., of which my pupil explained to me the rest when we returned to our chamber."
" What a want of delicacy !— and yet they praise Russian hospitality. You just spoke of cruel noblemen who aggravated the fate of the prisoners : did you fall in with any ? "
" Before reaching Toula, I made one of a small party of prisoners confided to a serjeant, an old soldier, who bebaved well to us. One evening we halted on the domains of a baron dreaded all around for his cruelty. This ruffian wished to kill ns with his own hand ; and the serjeant had difficulty in defending our lives against the patriotic rage of the old boyard."
u These men are, indeed, sons of the servants of Ivan IV.! Am I wrong in exclaiming against their inhumanity ? Did the father of your pupil give you much money `í "
" When I arrived under his roof, I was stript of everything : to clothe me, he generously ordered his tailor to return one of his old coats : he was not ashamed to dress the preceptor of his son in a garment which an Italian lacquey would not have put on."
" And yet the Russians are said to be munificent."
" Yes ; but they are shabby in the extreme in their private family arrangements. An Englishman once came to Toula. on which occasion everything was turned upside-down in the
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houses he was to visit; people were busy with their dresse= rooms were scoured, wax-lights substituted for the candles; in short, all the habits of life were changed.''
" Everything that you tell me only too well justifies my opinion: I see, sir, that, at the bottom, you think as I do: we only differ in language."
" It must be confessed that a man becomes very indifferent after having passed two years of his life in Russia."
" Yes, you give me a proof of it. Is this disposition general ? "
" Nearly so : one feels that tyranny is more powerful than words, and that publicity can do nothing against such facts."
" It must still have soiA efficacy, or the Russians would not so greatly dread it. It is your culpable inertia — permit me to say so — and that of persons who think as you do, which perpetuates the blindness of Europe and the world, and leaves the field free for oppression."