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[487] at the battle of Jena, with the Prussians, against the French, and six weeks afterwards fought with the French against the Prussians.1 He went through the Russian campaign,—still on the French side; was one of eleven, out of above seven hundred officers under his command, that came back alive; was left for dead at the battle of Moskwa, and had his fingers and toes frozen in the night, but was picked up in the morning by the Russians and sent as a prisoner, with nearly four hundred other officers, into Asia, where he was kindly and well treated, but where the climate was so fatal to them that he was the only person that lived to get home,—a happiness which he enjoyed only because his wife, at Prague, procured, through the intercession of the Grand Duchess of Weimar with her brother, the Emperor Alexander, an Ukase for his liberation, for he was already ill, when it arrived, with the disease of which all the rest, sooner or later, died. He did not reach home till after the battle of Leipzic, and then was sent directly into France to fight against the French, which he seems to have done with a hearty good-will

He talks quite agreeably, and relates well, so that some of his stories produce a striking effect. I remember one night, at the theatre, he made me shudder at an account of his feelings during an evening of the Russian campaign, when, successively, every person belonging to his military household, seven in number, was cut off and put to death by the Cossacks.

I spent the evening-after nine o'clock, when her salon opensat the Countess Stroganoff's, where I was amused with a repartee of the Princess Lowenstein. From some accident we fell into conversation in German, and Count Gourieff, the Russian Ambassador at Rome, changed it back to French, saying that, though he spoke German fluently enough, he always felt awkwardly when he talked it with such persons as were round the table then; because, said he, ‘Je le parle si rarement en bonne compagnie.’ The thing was very simply said, and very truly said, and he meant by it only, that, talking German with servants and tradespeople every day, and French in all good society, he had come to separate and distinguish the two languages accordingly. But the Princess Lowenstein's German blood was up, and turning rather shortly, but very gayly upon him, she said, ‘Mais vous parlez l'allemand si parfaitement, Mons. le Comte, qu'il parait que vous avez beaucoup de pratique.’ The Count laughed as heartily and as good-naturedly as anybody, but, as he said to me, ‘I n'y a pas de reponse à cela, j'irai jouer’.; and he went off to the


1 Following the course of the King of Saxony.

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