Letters from France and Italy (1847-1852)

as far from us as one might think; we are in the midst of it. The emancipation of the peasants with land is the beginning of a great social revolution into which Russia is entering.

Economic or social? Decide for yourself. In the meantime, I will tell you an anecdote I heard from Polevoï, from the time when he was laughing in his Telegraphe The Telegraph (*) and not at all weeping with Pauline the Siberian. A clerk, an amateur of newspapers and a great patriot, asked him one day, or so he claims: "Allow me to ask you, did the brave General Coulneff perish on the field of battle or on the field of honor?"

I no longer remember what Polevoï replied to him, but I would have told him very politely: "Which of the two do you prefer?" And I would have consoled him by affirming his opinion.

The West finds itself in quite different conditions than we do regarding the fundamental, economic revolution. Our fears are imitation, a borrowed sentiment, and therefore a sentiment that is unmotivated and untrue.

The current position of the State in Europe is a port it has reached through painful navigation, through paths complicated as time went on, sometimes by advancing too far, sometimes by lagging behind. It does not present the aspect of a harmoniously completed state, but that of a state painfully constituted according to possibilities; while consolidating

(*) Name of Polevoï's journal.