re obliged to show indulgence.

To this city necessity brought Alexander: he repaired thither from
Polotsk, preceded by his proclamations, and looked for by the nobility
and the mercantile class. His first appearance was amidst the assembled
nobility. There every thing was great--the circumstance, the assembly,
the speaker, and the resolutions which he inspired. His voice betrayed
emotion. No sooner had he ceased, than one general simultaneous,
unanimous cry burst from all hearts:--"Ask what you please, sire! we
offer you every thing! take our all!"

One of the nobles then proposed the levy of a militia; and in order to
its formation, the gift of one peasant in twenty-five: but a hundred
voices interrupted him, crying, that "the country required a greater
sacrifice; that it was necessary to grant one serf in ten, ready armed,
equipped, and supplied with provisions for three months." This was
offering, for the single government of Moscow, eighty thousand men, and
a great quantity of stores.

This sacrifice was immediately voted without deliberation--some say with
enthusiasm, and that it was executed in like manner, so long as the
danger was at hand. Others have attributed the concurrence of this
assembly to so urgent a proposition, to submission alone--a sentiment
indeed, which, in the presence of absolute power, absorbs every other.

They add, that, on the breaking up of the meeting, the principal nobles
were heard to murmur among themselves against the extravagance of such a
measure. "Was the danger then so pressing? Was there not the Russian
army, which, as they were told, still numbered four hundred thousand
men, to defend them? Why then deprive them of so many peasants! The
service of these men would be, it was said, only temporary; but who
could ever wish for their return? It was, on the contrary, an event to
be dreaded. Would these serfs, habituated to the irregularities of war,
bring back their former submission? Undoubtedly not: they would return
full of new sentiments and new ideas, with which they would infect the
villages; they would there propagate a refractory spirit, which would
give infinite trouble to the master by spoiling the slave."

Be this as it may, the resolution of that meeting was generous, and
worthy of so great a nation. The details are of little consequence. We
well know that it is the same everywhere; that every thing in the world
loses by being seen too near; and lastly, that nations ou