One feels
pleasure for a moment in this brilliant atmosphere, which is an
agreeable dissipation of life; but in the long run no information is
acquired in it, no faculties are developed in it, and men who pass
their life in this manner never acquire any capacity for study or
business. Far otherwise was it with the society of Paris; there we
have seen men whose characters have been entirely formed by the
lively or serious conversation to which the intercourse between the
nobility and men of letters gave birth.
CHAPTER 17.
The Imperial Family.
I had at last the pleasure of seeing that monarch, equally absolute
by law and custom, and so moderate from his own disposition. The
empress Elizabeth, to whom I was at first presented, appeared to me
the tutelary angel of Russia. Her manners are extremely reserved,
but what she says is full of life, and it is from the focus of all
generous ideas that her sentiments and opinions have derived
strength and warmth. While I listened to her, I was affected by
something inexpressible, which did not proceed from her grandeur,
but from the harmony of her soul; so long was it since I had known
an instance of concord between power and virtue. As I was conversing
with the empress, the door opened, and the emperor Alexander did me
the honor to come and talk to me. What first struck me in him was
such an expression of goodness and dignity, that the two qualities
appear inseparable, and in him to form only one.
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