The next day, however, I had promised to spend with the Prince de Ligne at his house on the Kalemberg. When I got there, I found the prince in company with M. Nowosilitzoff, a Russian statesman of great ability and a trusty adviser of Emperor Alexander, who, it was said at the time, was deeply interested in the future of Poland. The constitution of that country, its organisation and its institutions, which were to reinstate her in her former rank among the European nations--in short, her destiny--was one of the gravest questions submitted to the deliberations of the Congress. A most confidential councillor of the czar and a member of the provisional government of Warsaw, M. Nowosilitzoff was at that period engaged in drawing up the constitution intended by the czar for his new kingdom. The Prince de Ligne professed an ardent sympathy for Poland. He admired her chivalrous and hospitable customs, and above all that frankness which forms the chief trait of the Polish character. Added to this admiration was his gratitude to a nation which had formerly admitted him among the ranks of its nobility. Consequently, he sat listening attentively to the projects of Alexander, projects which just then inspired a certain belief. As for me, the subject appealed to me like everything connected with the country in which I spent some of the best years of my youth. ‘After so many unprecedented efforts, after so many disappointed hopes and useless sacrifices, Poland bids fair to breathe at last,’ said M. Nowosilitzoff. ‘Deceived for many years by the man who had the misfortune to consider his will as a ruling principle, his power as a proof of his statesmanship, and his success as a reason for it, the Poles were not altogether unjustified in believing in promises tending to reinstate them as a nation.’ ‘There is no nation on the face of the earth who would not have made the same sacrifices for so noble an illusion,’ remarked the prince.