The first province we had to cross, Volhynia, forms a part of Russian Poland; it is a fertile country, over-run with Jews, like Gallicia, but much less miserable.  I stopped at the chateau of a Polish nobleman to whom I had been recommended, who advised me to hasten my journey, as the French were marching upon Volhynia, and might easily enter it in eight days.  The Poles, in general, like the Russians much better than they do the Austrians; the Russians and Poles are both of Sclavonian origin:  they have been enemies, but respect each other mutually, while the Germans, who are further advanced in European civilization than the Sclavonians, have not learned to do them justice in other respects.  It was easy to see that the Poles in Volhynia were not at all afraid of the entrance of the French; but although their opinions were known, they were not in the least subjected to that petty persecution which only excites hatred without restraining it.  The spectacle, however, of one nation subjected by another, is always a painful one;—­centuries must elapse before the union is sufficiently established to make the names of victor and vanquished be forgotten.

At Gitomir, the chief town of Volhynia, I was told that the Russian minister of police had been sent to Wilna, to learn the motive of the emperor Napoleon’s aggression, and to make a formal protest against his entry into the Russian territory.  One can hardly credit the numberless sacrifices made by the emperor Alexander, in order to preserve peace.  And in fact, far from Napoleon having it in his power to accuse the emperor Alexander of violating the treaty of Tilsit, the latter might have been reproached with a too scrupulous fidelity to that fatal treaty; and it was rather he who had the right of declaring war against Napoleon, as having first violated it.  The emperor of France in his conversation with M. Balasheff, the minister of police, gave himself up to those inconceivable indiscretions which might be taken for abandon, if we did not know that it suits him to increase the terror which he inspires by exhibiting himself as superior to all kinds of calculation.  “Do you think,” said he to M. Balasheff, “that I care a straw for these Polish jacobins?” And I have been really assured that there is in existence a letter, addressed several years since to M. de Romanzoff by one of Napoleon’s ministers, in which it was proposed to strike out the name of Poland and the Poles from all European acts.  How unfortunate for this nation that the emperor Alexander had not taken the title of king of Poland, and thereby associated the cause of this oppressed people with that of all generous minds!  Napoleon asked one of his generals, in the presence of M. de Balasheff, if he had ever been at Moscow, and what sort of city it was.  The general replied that it had appeared to him to be rather a large village than a capital.  And how many churches are there in it?—­continued the emperor.  About sixteen hundred:—­was the reply.  That is quite inconceivable, rejoined Napoleon, at a time when the world has ceased to be religious.  Pardon me, sire, said M. de Balashoff, the Russians and Spaniards are so still.  Admirable reply! and which presaged, one would hope, that the Russians would be the Castilians of the North.