Excerpt from Scenes of Russian Court Life: Being the Correspondence of Alexander I. With His Sister Catherine There are several bundles which must have remained as they are without ever having been opened under Nicholas I., and which in the two following reigns were consulted by no historian, any more than were the files of the State Archives. There were also found in the State Archives, in several bundles bearing the Emperor Nicholas's seal, letters from the Grand Duchess to Alexander. We are now authorised to make public these valuable documents, full of interest and information, which reveal more than one new feature of the Emperor's character. Often, in spite of their air of uncertainty and hesitation, these letters bear witness to clearness and firmness of view, to perfect confidence in taking a decision or determining it beforehand. You see him, strong in his experience of life, now pursuing resolutely the execution of an accepted plan, now tracing for himself a line of conduct tardily determined on. All that was enigmatical to his contemporaries, all that men then held to be irresolution of character, vanishes in the new light of to-day. And in like manner his estimates, astonishing in their correctness, of different personages, native or foreign, stamp him as a keen gauger of men, an enlightened judge of the merits and shortcomings of individuals. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.