That country must certainly be
exceedingly different from those which surround it to inspire a
decided attachment; nations which are confounded with one another by
slight shades of difference, or which are divided into several
separate states, never devote themselves with real passion to the
conventional association to which they have attached the name of
country.
CHAPTER 18.
Manners of the Great Russian Nobility.
I went to spend a day at the country seat of prince Narischkin,
great chamberlain of the court, an amiable, easy and polished man,
but who cannot exist without a fete; it is at his house that you
obtain a correct notion of that vivacity in their tastes, which
explains the defects and qualities of the Russians. The house of M.
de Narischkin is always open, and if there happen to be only twenty
persons at his country seat, he begins to be weary of this
philosophical retreat. Polite to strangers, always in movement, and
yet perfectly capable of the reflection required to stand well at
court: greedy of the enjoyments of imagination, but placing these
only in things and not in books; impatient every where but at court,
witty when it is to his advantage to be so, magnificent rather than
ambitious, and seeking in everything for a certain Asiatic grandeur,
in which fortune and rank are more conspicuous than personal
advantages.
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