“I see that the Russians,” he writes to the Comte de Ségur, “learn the liberal arts in the same way that _le médecin malgré lui_ (the doctor in spite of himself) took his degree. They are foot-soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, priests, dragoons, musicians, engineers, actors, cuirassiers, painters and surgeons. I see the Russians sing and dance in the trenches, though they are never relieved, and remain in the midst of shot and shell, of snow or mud, clever, clean, attentive, respectful, obedient, trying to forestall their orders by divining them in the eyes of their officers.” The greatest pleasure the General de Ligne had was to write and receive news of absent friends. His letters are so wonderfully graphic, the slightest detail is invested with so much charm, that one is never tired of reading them. Those he wrote to his son Charles are a perfect diary of his life. FROM MARSHAL ROMANZOFF’S HEADQUARTERS IN POLAND. _8th June 1788._ “If you inquire, my dear Charles, how I am, I shall reply: Always the same. I am continually with the armies and the marshals, trying to make them do something. But the devil is with them, in spite of all their Russian signs of the cross. “The best thing I have done is to have left that quiz, that maker of compliments, my admirer, as he calls himself, for Kaminiecz. Ah! if I still had a heart, how terribly in love I should be! The governor’s wife,[70] that magnificent Greek, known and admired all over the world, drove me in a berlin within half a cannon’s range of Choczim, from whence a few shots were fired over our heads. “I confess that I felt more inclined to find out her weak point of attack than to reconnoitre that of the fortress. “I stay at her house; but what an infernal row goes on! A rattle of chains all night; I thought there were ghosts. The fact is that her husband, who is commandant of Kaminiecz, has all his work done by convicts. What a contrast between their rascally countenances and the beauty of her whom they serve, under the sway of the rod! Even the cook is a convict; it is economical, but dreadful. “I wish, my dear Charles, that Oczakoff (I must return to Potemkin, for I am still more incapable of moving this man) may procure me something glorious in your style. I shall be killed on your account, for you must have a father worthy of you. _You thought of me_, you say; you are sublime and touching. You have worked for me; I will work for you. I send you a tender farewell from these five or six hundred leagues distance.” The Prince found Potemkin and his army just as he had left them, and he writes to his son, who had recommended a Prussian officer to him:---- FROM THE CAMP IN THE DESERTS OF TARTARY. Before OCZAKOFF, _30th July_.