Let us have the melancholy courage to admit this, and to say
that the faubourg Saint-Germain is still the debtor of Poland.
Was Comte Adam rich, or was he poor, or was he an adventurer? This
problem was long unsolved. The diplomatic salons, faithful to
instructions, imitated the silence of the Emperor Nicholas, who held
that all Polish exiles were virtually dead and buried. The court of
the Tuileries, and all who took their cue from it, gave striking proof
of the political quality which was then dignified by the name of
sagacity. They turned their backs on a Russian prince with whom they
had all been on intimate terms during the Emigration, merely because
it was said that the Emperor Nicholas gave him the cold shoulder.
Between the caution of the court and the prudence of the diplomates,
the Polish exiles of distinction lived in Paris in the Biblical
solitude of "super flumina Babylonis," or else they haunted a few
salons which were the neutral ground of all opinions. In a city of
pleasure, like Paris, where amusements abound on all sides, the
heedless gayety of a Pole finds twice as many encouragements as it
needs to a life of dissipation.
It must be said, however, that Adam had two points against him,--his
appearance, and his mental equipment. There are two species of Pole,
as there are two species of Englishwoman.
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