* (Note by the Editor) * This expression has been already quoted in the third volume of the Considerations on the French Revolution; but it deserves to be repeated. All this, however, it must be remembered, was written at the end of 1812. (End of Note by the Editor.)
From the emperor’s I went to his respectable mother’s, that princess to whom calumny has never been able to impute a sentiment unconnected with the happiness of her husband, her children, or the family of unfortunate persons of whom she is the protectress. I shall relate, farther on, in what manner she governs that empire of charity, which she exercises in the midst of the omnipotent empire of her son. She lives in the palace of the Taurida, and to get to her apartments you have to cross a hall, built by prince Potemkin, of incomparable grandeur; a winter garden occupies a part of it, and you see the trees and plants through the pillars which surround the middle inclosure. Every thing in this residence is colossal; the conceptions of the prince who built it were fantastically gigantic. He had towns built in the Crimea, solely that the empress might see them on her passage; he ordered the assault of a fortress, to please a beautiful woman, the princess Dolgorouki, who had disdained his suit, The favor of his Sovereign mistress created him such as he showed himself; but there is remarkable, notwithstanding, in the characters of most of the great men of Russia, such as Menzikoff, Suwarow, Peter I. himself, and