It is certain that the idea of death
produces little effect on the Russians; whether it is from courage,
or from the inconstancy of their impressions, long regrets are
hardly in their character; they are more susceptible of superstition
than emotion: superstition attaches to this life, and religion to
another; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue;
it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become
superstitious, and it is on the contrary by the sacrifice of these
same desires, that we are religious.
M. de Romanzow, the minister of foreign affairs in Russia, loaded me
with the most amiable attentions, and it was with regret that I
considered him as so implicated in the system of the emperor
Napoleon, that he must necessarily retire, like the English
ministers, when that system was abandoned. Doubtless, in an absolute
monarchy, the will of the master explains every thing; but the
dignity of a prime minister perhaps requires that words of an
opposite tendency should not proceed from the same mouth. The
sovereign represents the state, and the state may change its system
of politics whenever circumstances require it; but the minister is
only a man, and a man, on questions of this nature, ought to have
but one opinion in the course of his life. It is impossible to have
better manners than Count Romanzow, or to receive strangers more
nobly.
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