"a Frenchman knows everything, even  if he has learned nothing - but because, in the first place,  he comes to our country in order to cast the most penetrating look at us, to pierce with his eagle eye all our  secrets and then pronounce his final, categorical opinion  of us; second, because he already knew in Paris what he  was going to write about Russia; he may even write an  account of his travels before he has even been to Russia and sell it to a publisher, and only then come to visit us ˜to show off, to captivate and to fly off.…"

Some of them arrive  with serious, important intentions, staying for as long as  28 days, an immense period, the number of  days showing the great conscientiousness of the explorer,  for in such a time he could carry out and even describe  a voyage round the world. After snatching his first impressions of Petersburg, in the description of which he  is not entirely unsuccessful, and, incidentally, casting a  critical eye over the English institutions as well, teaching, in passing, the Russian boyars (les bayards) table-rapping  or blowing soap bubbles, which is very charming and a  great improvement on the majestic and swaggering bore dom of our assemblies, he finally makes up his mind to  make a thorough and detailed study of Russia, and leaves  for Moscow. In Moscow he has a look at the Kremlin,  gives a thought to Napoleon, praises the tea, praises the  beauty and the health of the people, sheds a tear over  their premature depravity, over the lamentable results of  the attempts to inoculate them with European civilisation,  over the disappearance of national customs, for which he  will immediately find proof in the change of ten guitar- shaped hackney cabs for one that is wagonette-shaped,  resembling a European cabriolet"

"The most stupid and dissolute of  them, having spent some time in Russia, leave us absolutely convinced that they have made the Russians happy  and to some extent changed Russia."