ourt circles in St. Petersburg, partly to
study the temper of the Russian people.

To the last moment of their intercourse the Czar appeared to be under
the spell of Napoleon's seductive powers. He came as a conquered
prince; he left with an honorable peace, with the friendship of his
magnanimous conqueror, and with an unsmirched imperial dignity. He had
saved his recent ally from destruction, and had secured a small
increase of territory for himself; for the future there were Finland
and the fairest portion of Turkey. But in a few days the magic began
to pass. He had not secured Constantinople, and he had promised to
evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia; he had not secured the complete
evacuation of Prussia; he had risked a rupture with England; he had,
above all, submitted to the creation of a state which, under the thin
disguise of another name, was but the germ of a reconstructed Poland.
It began to appear as if he had been wheedled. There is sufficient
evidence that such bitter reflections made their appearance very soon;
but they were repressed, at first from pure shame, and afterward from
stern necessity, when England began to vent her anger. But the
Russians themselves could not be repressed. Before long Savary was
hated and abused by the public, the more because he maintained his
ascendancy over the Czar. The reports sent home by the former police
agent were clever and instructive, but their pictures of factional
disputes and Oriental plots at court, of aristocratic luxury and
general poverty, of popular superstition and barbarous manners, were
not reassuring, and confirmed in his Emperor's mind doubts felt from
the beginning as to the stability of the alliance consummated at
Tilsit, an alliance outwardly fair, but, like all Talleyrand's
diplomacy, more showy than substantial.[12]

[Footnote 12: For an interesting comment on Talleyrand's
diplomacy, see Sorel: L'Europe et la Revolution Francaise,
Vol. VI, pp. 23-25.]

Napoleon left for Koenigsberg the same day on which he bade adieu to
Alexander. His route was by way of Dresden. He was not in the
slightest degree deceived. The peace of Europe, he said, was in St.
Petersburg; the affairs of the world were there. But he had gained
much. The outposts of his empire were established, and from one of
them he could touch with his hand the enchanted East. He had secured
the temporary cooeperation of Russia, and with that as a beginning he
might