other 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. His country seat is as agreeable as it is possible for a
place of the kind to be, created by the hand of man: all the
surrounding country is marshy and barren; so as to make this
residence a perfect Oasis. On ascending the terrace, you see the
gulph of Finland, and perceive in the distance, the palace which
Peter I. built upon its borders; but the space which separates it
from the sea and the palace is almost a waste, and the park of M.
Narischkin alone charms the eye of the observer. We dined in the
house of the Moldavians, that is to say, in a saloon built according
to the taste of these people; it was arranged so as to protect from
the heat of the sun, a precaution rather needless in Russia. However
the imagination is impressed to that degree with the idea that you
are living among a people who have only come into the North by
accident, that it appears natural to find there the customs of the
South, as if the Russians were some day or other to bring to
Petersburg the climate of their old country. The table was covered
with the fruits of all countries, according to the custom taken from
the East, of only letting the fruits appear, while a crowd of
servants carried round to each guest the dishes of meat and
vegetables they requi