COUNT XAVIER DE MAISTRE

pation in a duel,* he found his confinement, while shutting liim from a little bit of eartb, opened to bim the universe. And the record of the pleasures, accidents, émotions, reflections that a journey of forty-two days around a room can procure for the man of feeling and délicate literary taste is the sum and substance of the little volume that this préfacés.

When the conquest of Savoy by the French was accomplished, Xavier de Maistre chose to serve foreign powers rather than give allegiance to a E-epublic whose principles he detested. His illustrious brother had been made Sardinian ambassador to Russia, and to Russia Xavier offered his sword. There, too, he carried perhaps the beginnings of the Expédition nocturne autour de ma chambre. In the Russian service he rose to high command, attaining at last, after being wounded in a siégé in Georgia, the rank of general. The success of the Voyage encoiiraged the author, however, to steal some hours from the service of the sword for that of the pen, and three other little volumes complété the short sériés of his works. The first, the Lépreux de la cité d^ Aoste, is, of its kind, perfect art ; its tone of quiet pathos and sublime résignation vibrâtes long in the memory of the reader. Les Prisonniers du Caucase is an anecdote of the Caucasus Mountains, where the author had had a soldier’s expérience. Lastly, La jeune Sibérienne is a touching narration of a Russian Evangeline in search not of her lover, but of the Emperor, to beg from him a pardon for her father, exiled in a Siberian prison.

Only once — in 1839 — did de Maistre visit Paris, but he was surprised to find that his books had already made him everywhere known and loved. Sainte-Beuve, the critic, made his short stay in Paris the occasion of a charming article. “ Heureux homme,” he wrote, et à envier, dont Tarbuste attique a fleuri, sans avoir besoin en aucun temps de l’engrais

*See chap. iii.