180 DISGRACE AND EXILEits belief in reason and science. De Maistre did not tire of repeating
to his Russian friends - of whom he had many - that the salvation
from the destructive effects of the Enlightenment lay in a return to a
strictly religious, unquestioning, non-rationalistic attitude. Men must
obey their God-appointed rulers without questioning, they must
renounce the pride that comes from such devilish ideas as natural
rights, liberty, and man-made constitutions. Unlike France, who was
justly expiating God's punishment, Russia had not progressed far on
the evil path, and in her case it would be sufficient to restore religious
orthodoxy and political autocracy to their traditional status. The ideas
of the Sardinian ambassador became quite popular in aristocratic
circles, for his remarkable intelligence, charm, brilliant wit, eloquence
and erudition, coupled with long residence in St. Petersburg, had
made him a leading personality in the capital. De Maistre had a wide
circle of powerful admirers and acquaintances, particularly at the
court of the Dowager Empress. It enabled him to make his views known
directly to the Emperor himself.
De Maistre disliked Speransky not so much as a person, but as the
representative proponent of the modern attitudes he hated most. In
the opinion of the Sardinian Ambassador, the Russian State Secretary
was the incarnation of 18th century political rationalism, whose
sacrilegious purpose it was to destroy the hallowed traditional pattern
of Russian autocracy. Speransky's reform proposals seemed to de
Maistre to be a direct threat to the very existence .of autocracy in
Russia, the last best hope on earth against the spirit of the French
revolution. But this was not all, de Maistre warned, Speransky's
nefarious influence went much deeper. Did the State Secretary not
spread the very germ of revolution? That was the significance of the
questioning and even sceptical attitude towards authority and tradition
which Speransky displayed when he required that every government
official have some knowledge of science, history, and philosophy. With
devilish cunning, Speransky had prepared the way for the spiritual
corruption of Russia's future leaders by educating the best sons of the
country's elite in the tenets of the 18th century at the Lycee of
Tsarskoe Selo. Finally, and like Rostopchin unaware of the paradox,
Count de Maistre denounced Speransky as the leading mind of the
Illuminates and mystical Free Masons.^1 The accusations of the1 "Plusieurs russes sont infectcs de la philosophie allemande: un homme surtout,
qui s'clcve it tout et qui n'aurait pu partir de plus bas puisqu'il est fils de pretre
(popowitch), M. Speranski, est un g-rand partisan de Kant, comme je m'en suis
aper~u dans une conversation: il in flue beaucoup sur les affaires. Ces gens perdront
I'Empereur comme ils en ont perdu tant d'autres." J. de Maistre, Correspondance,