Ten Years Exile | Page 4

10.

Arrival in Russia

Chapter 11.
Kiow

Chapter 12.
Road from Kiow to Moscow

Chapter 13.
Appearance of the Country--Character of the Russians

Chapter 14.
Moscow

Chapter 15.
Road from Moscow to Petersburg

Chapter 16.
St. Petersburg

Chapter 17.
The Imperial Family

Chapter 18.
Manners of the great Russian Nobility

Chapter 19.
Establishments for Public Education.--Institute of St. Catherine

Chapter 20.
Departure for Sweden.--Passage through Finland

TEN YEARS' EXILE
Part The First


CHAPTER 1.
Causes of Bonaparte's animosity against me.
It is not with the view of occupying the public attention with what

relates to myself, that I have determined to relate the circumstances of
my ten years' exile; the miseries which I have endured, however bitterly
I may have felt them, are so trifling in the midst of the public calamities
of which we are witnesses, that I should be ashamed to speak of myself
if the events which concern me were not in some degree connected
with the great cause of threatened humanity. The Emperor Napoleon,
whose character exhibits itself entire in every action of his life, has
persecuted me with a minute anxiety, with an ever increasing activity,
with an inflexible rudeness; and my connections with him contributed
to make him known to me, long before Europe had discovered the key
of the enigma.
I shall not here enter into a detail of the events that preceded the
appearance of Bonaparte upon the political stage of Europe; if I
accomplish the design I have of writing the life of my father, I will
there relate what I have witnessed of the early part of the revolution,
whose influence has changed the fate of the whole world. My object at
present is only to retrace what relates to myself in this vast picture; in
casting from that narrow point of view some general surveys over the
whole, I flatter myself with being frequently overlooked, in relating my
own history.
The greatest grievance which the Emperor Napoleon has against me, is
the respect which I have always entertained for real liberty. These
sentiments have been in a manner transmitted to me as an inheritance,
and adopted as my own, ever since I have been able to reflect on the
lofty ideas from which they are derived, and the noble actions which
they inspire. The cruel scenes which have dishonored the French
revolution, proceeding only from tyranny under popular forms, could
not, it appears to me, do any injury to the cause of liberty: at the most,
we could only feel discouraged with respect to France; but if that
country had the misfortune not to know how to possess that noblest of
blessings, it ought not on that account to be proscribed from the face of
the earth. When the sun disappears from the horizon of the Northern
regions, the inhabitants of those countries do not curse his rays,
because they are still shining upon others more favored by heaven.

Shortly after the 18th Brumaire, Bonaparte had heard that I had been
speaking strongly in my own parties, against that dawning oppression,
whose progress I foresaw as clearly as if the future had been revealed to
me. Joseph Bonaparte, whose understanding and conversation I liked
very much, came to see me, and told me, "My brother complains of you.
Why, said he to me yesterday, why does not Madame de Stael attach
herself to my government? what is it she wants? the payment of the
deposit of her father? I will give orders for it: a residence in Paris? I
will allow it her. In short, what is it she wishes?" "Good God!" replied I,
"it is not what I wish, but what I think, that is in question." I know not
if this answer was reported to him, but if it was, I am certain that he
attached no meaning to it; for he believes in the sincerity of no one's
opinions; he considers every kind of morality as nothing more than a
form, to which no more meaning is attached than to the conclusion of a
letter; and as the having assured any one that you are his most humble
servant would not entitle him to ask any thing of you, so if any one says
that he is a lover of liberty,--that he believes in God,--that he prefers his
conscience to his interest, Bonaparte considers such professions only as
an adherence to custom, or as the regular means of forwarding
ambitious views or selfish calculations. The only class of human beings
whom he cannot well comprehend, are those who are sincerely attached
to an opinion, whatever be the consequences of it: such persons
Bonaparte looks upon as boobies, or as traders who outstand their
market, that is to say,