Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/274

246 coats, were to him matters of the same importance. Fond of his authority, even to jealousy, the palace revolutions, so frequent in Russia, and those of another kind which had taken place in France, caused him continual uneasiness. In order to convince himself that he could do everything, and that he was really a sovereign, he did nothing but reign from five o'clock in the morning, to eleven at night; at every moment one heard of a favour or a banishment, the release of one prisoner, or the incarceration of another; the panic was general, and one would have believed himself shut up in a besieged city, where a shell might fall upon any head without distinction. Nobody dared to speak; all were so afraid, that even in carriages we only whispered, lest the coachman should hear.

Whenever I passed through the quays, and saw, on the other side of the Neva, the bastions of the fortress, where I had suffered so long, the horror I felt made me turn away my eyes. But gratitude as well as justice obliges me to say that these fears and alarms,