CHAPTER 20.

Departure for Sweden.—­Passage through Finland.

The emperor quitted Petersburg, and I learned that he was gone to Abo, where he was to meet General Bernadotte, Prince Royal of Sweden.  This news left no farther doubt about the determination of that prince to take part in the present war, and nothing could be more important at that moment for the salvation of Russia, and consequently for that of Europe We shall see the influence of it developed in the sequel of this narrative.  The news of the entrance of the French into Smolensko arrived during the conferences of the prince of Sweden with the emperor of Russia; and it was there that Alexander contracted the engagement with himself and the Prince Royal, his ally, never to sign a treaty of peace.  “Should Petersburg be taken,” said he, “I will retire into Siberia.  I will there resume our ancient customs, and like our long-bearded ancestors, we will return anew to conquer the Empire.”  “This resolution will liberate Europe,” exclaimed the Prince Royal, and his prediction begins to be accomplishing.

I saw the Emperor Alexander a second time upon his return from Abo, and the conversation I had the honor of holding with him, satisfied me to that degree of the firmness of his determination, that in spite of the capture of Moscow, and all the reports which followed it, I firmly believed that he would never yield.  He was so good as to tell me, that after the capture of Smolensko, Marshal Berthier had written to the Russian commander in chief respecting some military matters, and terminated his letter by saying that the Emperor Napoleon always preserved the tenderest friendship for the Emperor Alexander, a stale mystification which the emperor of Russia received as it deserved.  Napoleon had given him some lessons in politics, and lessons in war, abandoning himself in the first to the quackery of vice, and in the second to the pleasure of exhibiting a disdainful carelessness.  He was deceived in the Emperor Alexander; he had mistaken the nobleness of his character for dupery; he had not been able to perceive that if the emperor of Russia had allowed himself to go too far in his enthusiasm for him, it was because he believed him a partizan of the first principles of the French revolution, which agreed with his own opinions; but never had Alexander the idea of associating with Napoleon to reduce Europe to slavery.  Napoleon thought in that, as well as in all other circumstances, to succeed in blinding a man by a false representation of his interest; but he encountered conscience, and his calculations were entirely baffled; for that is an element, of the strength of which he knows nothing, and which he never allows to enter into his combinations.