Daily National Intelligencer

Anecdote of the Emperor Alexander.

HONORABLE IF TRUE.

The very moment when the emperor had given the word of command, and the guard on parade was going to pay him the usual military honors, a man in tattered garments, with his hair in disorder and a look of wildness, approached and gave him a slap on the shoulder. Alexander, who was standing at the moment facing the troops, immediately turned round. At the sight of so uncouth a figure, he stared, and asked the man, with astonishment, what he wanted. "I have something to say to you, Alexander Paulowitz," said the stranger, in the Russian language. "Say on, then," answered the emperor, with a smile of encouragement, and laying his hand on the vagabond's shoulder: A pause succeeded; the military guard stood still; and no person ventured, either by word or motion, to disturb his majesty during this singular interview. The grand duke Constantine alone, whose attention had been excited by this unusual interruption, advanced somewhat nearer to his brother. The stranger then related, that he had held the rank of captain in the Russian service, and had been present in the campaigns both in Italy and Switzerland: but his commanding officer conceiving an enmity to him, misrepresented him in such a manner to Suvarrow, that the latter turned him out of the army. Being thus turned adrift in a foreign country, without money or friends, he had afterwards served as a private soldier in the same army; but being severely wounded and mangled at Zurich [here he pulled open his rags and showed several gun-shot wounds,] he had closed his campaign in a French prison. He had now begged all the way to Petersburg, to apply to the emperor himself for justice, and to implore him to enquire into the reason of his ignominious degradation from his rank. Alexander listened with patience till he had finished, and then asked, in a significant tone, if there was no exaggeration in his story. "Let me die under the knout," said the officer, if I should be found to have uttered one word of falsehood. "The Emperor then desired his brother to conduct the stranger to the palace, while he attended to the troops who waited for him. The result was, that the commanding officer who had behaved so shamefully, though of a good family and a prince in title, was severely reprimanded, while the brave warrior whom he had unjustly persecuted, was reinstated in his rank, and presented by the emperor with a considerable gratuity.