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Updated: May 10, 2025
The Russian territory in Europe and Asia contains more than seventy millions of inhabitants. In it thirty different languages are spoken. The Sclavonian race predominates, no doubt, but there are besides Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Courlanders.
I warned you to beware of him for he is a Scotchman, is Lacy and his great-great aunt married the wife's cousin of an ancestor of mine. However, I don't care to trust myself to those blessed Russians and Courlanders, and I have determined to cast my lot, and my niece's, and my man Peter, and my two waiting maids, and my chaise, and my horses, with you."
Oh, what a dreary place that was! I had mountains of writing to do, those devilish Courlanders presenting endless petitions, protests, pieces, justifications, and other rubbish, all of which had to be answered civilly.
It was a time of negotiations, contentions, bickerings, proclamations and counter proclamations, Count Saxe on the one side, and the Russian Empire on the other; the Courlanders in between, handing out lies by the shovelful, with equal impartiality on either hand! What liars they were!
He had enjoyed remarkable opportunities for more than a year of studying the Courland vintage of lies for every nation has its own style of lies. A Frenchman lies not like a German. A Courlander lies however, it has been said that the devil and ninety-nine Courlanders make a hundred liars.
Midway the stairs we met Cardinal Fleury, with his private chaplain, descending. The cardinal was a mild-mannered old man, and seeing Count Saxe, he stopped and spoke to him. "You are back from Courland, then, Monsieur," said the cardinal, politely. "No doubt you are pleased to be once more among polite persons. I hear the Courlanders are very wild and wicked people, with no fear of God."
We kept up a brisk correspondence with France when we could; but the Courlanders have no notion that a courier is a sacred object, so a vast number of our letters never got farther than Mitau. Our communication from the rest of the world was scant and uncertain. Even Mademoiselle Lecouvreur's letters rarely reached us, although we knew she wrote faithfully and often to Count Saxe.
Among them luckily was a volume of Bourdaloue's sermons, of which Count Saxe always made me read one whenever the Courlanders were more devilish than usual in giving us fair words of emptiness for truth; and my master always fitted the preacher's denunciations to his enemies.
We were in Mitau from June, 1726, when those rascally Courlanders pretended they meant to make Count Saxe Duke of Courland, until August, 1727, when we made our way out of the place only twenty of us; and not without trouble, either, of which I shall speak presently. To this rag of a remnant of twenty was Count Saxe's following reduced.
"Monsieur," replied Beauvais, "I promised my old father, when next we returned to Paris, to have sixteen trumpeters ahead of us when we crossed the Pont Royal, but I am afraid I was a liar." Count Saxe laughed at this, and swore very melodiously at the Courlanders; but being quick to decide, he gave orders that we should prepare to leave Mitau within three days.
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