We were entertained with a concert of that horn music which is peculiar to Russia, and of which mention has been often made.  Of twenty musicians, each plays only one and the same note, every time it returns; each of these men in consequence bears the name of the note which he is employed to execute.  When one of them is seen going along, people say:  that is the sol, that is the mi, or that is the re of M. Narischkin.  The horns go on increasing from rank to rank, and this music has been by some one called, very properly, a living organ.  At a distance the effect is very fine:  the exactness and the purity of the harmony excite the most noble ideas; but when you come near to these poor performers, who are there like pipes, yielding only one sound, and quite unable to participate by their own emotions in the effect produced, the pleasure dies away:  one does not like to see the fine arts transformed into mechanical arts, to be acquired by dint of strength like exercise.

Some of the inhabitants of the Ukraine, dressed in scarlet, came afterwards to sing to us some of the airs of their country, which are singularly pleasing:  they are sometimes gay and sometimes melancholy, and sometimes both united.  These airs sometimes break off abruptly in the midst of the melody, as if the imagination of the people was tired before finishing what at first pleased them, or found it more piquant to suspend the charm at the very moment its influence was greatest.  It is thus that the Sultana of the Arabian Nights always breaks off her story, when its interest is at the height.

M. Narischkin in the midst of this variety of pleasures, proposed to us to drink a toast to the united arms of the Russians and English, and gave at the same moment a signal to his artillery, which gave almost as loud a salute as that of a sovereign.  The inebriety of hope seized all the guests; as for me, I felt myself bathed in tears.  Was it possible that a foreign tyrant should reduce me to wish that the French should be beat?  I wish, said I then, for the fall of him, who is equally the oppressor of France and Europe; for the true French will triumph if he is repulsed.  The English and the Russian guests, and particularly M. Narischkin, approved my idea, and the name of France, formerly like that of Armida in its effects, was once more heard with kindness by the knights of the east, and of the sea, who were going to fight against her.  Calrnucks with flat features are still brought up in the houses of the Russian nobility, as if to preserve a specimen of those Tartars who were conquered by the Sclavonians.  In the palace of Narischkin there were two or three of these half-savage Calmucks running about.  They are agreeable enough in their infancy, but at the age of twenty they lose all the charms of youth:  obstinate, though slaves, they amuse their masters by their resistance, like a squirrel fighting with the wires of his cage.  It was painful to look at this specimen of the human race debased; I thought I saw, in the midst of all the pomp of luxury, an image of what man may become, when he derives no dignity either from religion or the laws, and this spectacle was calculated to humble the pride which the enjoyments of splendor may inspire.