The Poles are the only nation, of those which Bonaparte drags after him, that create any interest.  I believe they know as well as we do, that they are only the pretence for the war, and that the emperor does not care a fig for their independence.  He has not even been able to refrain from expressing several times to the emperor Alexander his disdain for Poland, solely because she wishes to be free:  but it suits his purposes to put her in the van against Russia, and the Poles avail themselves of that circumstance to restore their national independence.  I know not if they will succeed, for it is with difficulty that despotism ever gives liberty, and what they will regain in their own cause, if successful, they will lose in the cause of Europe.  They will be Poles, but Poles as much enslaved as the three nations upon whom they will no longer depend.  Be that as it may, the Poles are the only Europeans who can serve under the banners of Napoleon without blushing.  The princes of the Rhenish Confederation think to find their interest in it by the loss of their honor; but Austria by a combination truly remarkable, at once sacrifices in it both her honor and her interest.  The emperor Napoleon wished the archduke Charles to take the command of these thirty thousand men; but the archduke fortunately saved himself from this insult; and when I saw him walking alone in a brown coat, in the alleys of the Prater, I recovered all my old respect for him.

The same subaltern diplomatist who had so unworthily advised the abandonment of the Tyrolese, was entrusted, during the absence of Prince Metternich from Vienna, with the police of foreigners, and he acquitted himself as you shall see.  The first few days he allowed me to remain undisturbed; I had formerly passed a winter at Vienna, and been very well received by the emperor and empress, and by the whole court:  it was, therefore, rather awkward to tell me that this time I would not be received, because I was in disgrace with the emperor Napoleon; particularly as this disgrace was partly occasioned by the praises which I had bestowed in my book on the morality and literary genius of the Germans.  But what was much more awkward was to run the risk of giving the least umbrage to a power, to which it must be confessed, they might very well sacrifice me, after all they had already done for it.  I suppose, therefore, that after I had been some days at Vienna, the chief of the police received some more exact information of the nature of my situation with Bonaparte, and in consequence thought it necessary to watch me; and this was his method of inspection.  He placed spies at my gate in the street, who followed me on foot, when my carriage drove slowly, and got into cabriolets in order not to lose sight of me, when I took an airing into the country.  This method of exercising the police appeared to me to unite both the French machiavelism, and German clumsiness.  The Austrians have persuaded themselves that they