98.
Of the wars between Napoleon and the Holy Alliance, Madame de Staël once said with most admirable and prophetic sense:—“It is a contest between a man who is the enemy of liberty, and a system which is equally its enemy.” But it is easier to get rid of a man than of a system: witness the Russians, who assassinate their czars one after another, but cannot get rid of their system.
99.
The Empress Elizabeth of Russia during the war with Sweden commanded the old Hetman of the Cossacks to come to court on his way to Finland. “If the Emperor, your father,” said the Hetman, “had taken my advice, your Majesty would not now have been annoyed by the Swedes.” “What was your advice?” asked the Empress. “To put all the nobility to death, and transplant the people into Russia.” “But that,” said the Empress, “would have been cruel!” “I do not see that,” he replied quietly; “they are all dead now, and they would only have been dead if my advice had been taken.”
Something strangely comprehensive and unanswerable in this barbarian logic!
100.
It was the Abbé Boileau who said of the Jesuits, that they had lengthened the Creed and shortened the Decalogue. The same witty ecclesiastic being asked why he always wrote in Latin, took a pinch of snuff, and answered gravely, “Why, for fear the bishops should read me!”