" "This resolution will liberate
Europe," exclaimed the Prince Royal, and his prediction begins to be
accomplishing.
I saw the Emperor Alexander a second time upon his return from Abo,
and the conversation I had the honor of holding with him, satisfied
me to that degree of the firmness of his determination, that in
spite of the capture of Moscow, and all the reports which followed
it, I firmly believed that he would never yield. He was so good as
to tell me, that after the capture of Smolensko, Marshal Berthier
had written to the Russian commander in chief respecting some
military matters, and terminated his letter by saying that the
Emperor Napoleon always preserved the tenderest friendship for the
Emperor Alexander, a stale mystification which the emperor of Russia
received as it deserved. Napoleon had given him some lessons in
politics, and lessons in war, abandoning himself in the first to the
quackery of vice, and in the second to the pleasure of exhibiting a
disdainful carelessness. He was deceived in the Emperor Alexander;
he had mistaken the nobleness of his character for dupery; he had
not been able to perceive that if the emperor of Russia had allowed
himself to go too far in his enthusiasm for him, it was because
he believed him a partizan of the first principles of the French
revolution, which agreed with his own opinions; but never had
Alexander the idea of associating with Napoleon to reduce
Europe to slavery.
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