rce rapidity of his
movements; he had annihilated the French armies in Italy by the
desperate daring of his attacks. Wherever Suwarrow came, he was
conqueror. In his whole career he had never been beaten. The soldiery
told numberless tales of his eccentricity--laughed at, mimicked, and
adored him. The nation honoured him as the national warrior. But the
failure of some of his detached corps in Switzerland had embarrassed the
campaign; and Paul, capricious as the winds, hastily recalled him. The
popular indignation now burst out in every form of anger. Placards fixed
at night on the palace walls; gipsy ballads sung in the streets;
maskers, at the countless balls of the nobles; satires in quaint verse,
and national proverbs, showed the public resentment to be universal.
Every incident furnished some contemptuous comment. The Czar had built a
wing to one of the palaces of Catharine. The addition wanted the
stateliness of the original fabric. This epigram was posted on the
building, in angry Slavonic:--

"One built a palace, one a stall.
One marble; one a plaster wall.
One sure to stand; one sure to fall.
So much for Catharine--and for Paul!"

In the midst of this growing perplexity, the English messenger arrived.
His tidings had been long anticipated, yet they came with the effect of
a thunderclap. The cabinet had resigned! I of course now waited only for
my order to return. But, in the mean time, this event formidably
increased the difficulties of my position. Foreigners will never allow
themselves to comprehend the nature of any English transaction whatever.
They deal with them all as if they were scenes on a stage. In the
incorrigible absurdity of their theatrical souls, they imagine a
parliamentary defeat to be a revolution, and the change of a ministry
the fall of an empire. Paul instantly cast off all his old partialities.
He pronounced England undone. The star of France was to be the light of
the west; he himself to be the luminary of the east. The bold ambition
of Catharine was to be realized; however, without the system or the
sagacity of her imperial genius. But Paul was to learn the terrible
lesson of a despotic government. The throne separated from the people,
is the more in peril the more widely it is separated. The people _would_
not be carried along with their master to the feet of his new political
idol. The substantial virtues of the national character resisted that
French alliance, which must b