alled out to him to be
the saviour of Russia. What a moment for a mortal being! His age
gave him no hope of surviving the fatigues of the campaign; but
there are moments when man has a wish to die for the satisfaction of
his soul. Certain of the generous opinions and of the noble conduct
of the Prince of Sweden, I was more than ever confirmed in the
resolution of going to Stockholm, previous to embarking for England;
towards the end of September I quitted Petersburg to repair to
Sweden through Finland. My new friends, those whom a community of
sentiment had brought about me, came to bid me adieu; Sir Robert
Wilson, who seeks every where an opportunity of fighting, and
inflaming his friends by his spirit: M. de Stein, a man of antique
character, who only lived in the hope of seeing the deliverance of
his country; the Spanish envoy; and the English minister, Lord
Tyrconnel; the witty Admiral Bentinck; Alexis de Noailles, the only
French emigrant from the imperial tyranny, the only one who was
there, like me, to bear witness for France; Colonel Dornberg, that
intrepid Hessian whom nothing has turned from the object of his
pursuit; and several Russians, whose names have been since
celebrated by their exploits. Never was the fate of the world
exposed to greater dangers; no one dared to say so, but all knew it:
I only, as a female, was not exposed to it; but I might reckon what
I had suffered as something. I knew not in bidding adieu to these
worthy knights of the human race, which of them I should ever see
again, and already two of them are no longer in existence. When the
passions of man rouse man against his fellows, when nations attack
each other with fury, we recognize, with sorrow, human destiny in
the miseries of humanity; but when a single being, similar to the
idols of the Laplanders, to whom the incense of fear is offered up,
spreads misery over the earth in torrents, we experience a sort of
superstitious fear which leads us to consider all honorable persons
as his victims.

On entering into Finland, every thing indicates that you have passed
into another country, and that you have to do with a very different
race from the Sclavonians. The Finns are said to come immediately
from the North of Asia; their language also is said to have no
resemblance to the Swedish, which is an intermediate one between the
English and the German. The countenances of the Finns, however, are
generally perfectly German: their fair hair,