esses which had
weighed him down at Venice. During the war, justice had been
administered in a grossly irregular manner. Hence, people had taken the
law into their own hands, and retaliation had completed the round of
wrong-doing. The taxes were collected with great difficulty. The higher
class exhibited an invincible repugnance to paying their debts. Some of
these difficulties in the way of firm and orderly government were
insuperable, and De Maistre vexed his soul in an unequal and only
partially successful contest. In after years, amid the miseries of his
life in Russia, he wrote to his brother thus: 'Sometimes in moments of
solitude that I multiply as much as I possibly can, I throw my head back
on the cushion of my sofa, and there with my four walls around me, far
from all that is dear to me, confronted by a sombre and impenetrable
future, I recall the days when in a little town that you know well'--he
meant Cagliari--'with my head resting on another sofa, and only seeing
around our own exclusive circle (good heavens, what an impertinence!)
little men and little things, I used to ask myself: "Am I then condemned
to live and die in this place, like a limpet on a rock?" I suffered
bitterly; my head was overloaded, wearied, flattened, by the enormous
weight of Nothing.'

But presently a worse thing befell him. In 1802 he received an order
from the king to proceed to St. Petersburg as envoy extraordinary and
minister plenipotentiary at the court of Russia. Even from this bitter
proof of devotion to his sovereign he did not shrink. He had to tear
himself from his wife and children, without any certainty when so cruel
a separation would be likely to end; to take up new functions which the
circumstances of the time rendered excessively difficult; while the
petty importance of the power he represented, and its mendicant attitude
in Europe, robbed his position of that public distinction and dignity
which may richly console a man for the severest private sacrifice. It is
a kind destiny which veils their future from mortal men. Fifteen years
passed before De Maistre's exile came to a close. From 1802 to 1817 he
did not quit the inhospitable latitudes of northern Russia.

De Maistre's letters during this desolate period furnish a striking
picture of his manner of life and his mental state. We see in them his
most prominent characteristics strongly marked. Not even the
painfulness of the writer's situation ever clouds his intr