I made at Kiow the trial of Russian hospitality.  The governor of the province, General Miloradowitsch, loaded me with the most amiable attentions; he had been an aide-de-camp of Suwarow, like him intrepid; he inspired me with greater confidence than I then had in the military successes of the Russians.  Before this, I had only happened to meet some officers of the German school, who had entirely got rid of their Russian character.  I saw in General Miloradowitsch a real Russian; brave, impetuous, confident, and wholly free from that spirit of imitation which sometimes entirely robs his countrymen even of their national character.  He told me a number of anecdotes of Suwarow, which prove that that warrior studied a great deal, although he preserved the original instinct which is connected with the immediate knowledge of men and things.  He carefully concealed his studies to strike with greater force the imagination of his troops, by assuming in all things an air of inspiration.

The Russians have, in my opinion, much greater resemblance to the people of the South, or rather of the East, than to those of the North.  What is European in them belongs merely to the manners of the court, which are nearly the same in all countries; but their nature is eastern.  General Miloradowitsch related to me that a regiment of Kalmucks had been put into garrison at Kiow, and that the prince of these Kalmucks came to him one day, to confess that he suffered very much from passing the winter cooped up in a town, and wished to obtain permission to encamp in the neighbouring forest.  Such a cheap pleasure it was impossible to refuse him; he and all his regiment went in consequence, in the middle of the snow, to take up their abode in their chariots, which at the same time serve them for huts.  The Russian soldiers bear nearly in the same degree the fatigues and privations of climate or of war, and the people of all classes exhibit a contempt of obstacles and of physical suffering, which will carry them successfully through the greatest undertakings.  This Kalmuck prince, to whom wooden houses appeared a residence too delicate in the middle of winter, gave diamonds to the ladies who pleased him at a ball; and as he could not make himself understood by them, he substituted presents for compliments, in the manner practised in India and other silent countries of the East, where speech has less influence than with us.  General Miloradowitsch invited me the very evening of my departure, to a ball at the house of a Moldavian princess, to which I regretted very much being unable to go.  All these names of foreign countries and of nations which are scarcely any longer European, singularly awaken the imagination.  You feel yourself in Russia at the gate of another earth, near to that East from which have proceeded so many religious creeds, and which still contains in its bosom incredible treasures of perseverance and reflection.

CHAPTER 12.