Said smiling Alexander I to future President John Quincy Adams, “On s’agrandit toujours un peu, dans ce monde.” (From Adams’ diary, May 6, 1811.)

A multiply revealing statement: The smile, a worldly smile, a smile of co-conspiracy; the Tsar’s evident presumption that he and the US Minister to Russia shared a secret; the French, the language of Enlightenment, the language of the Russian court, the language also of sophisticated international elites of the time; and of course the substance of the comment, the Tsar’s recognition that America and Russia both have expansionist aims.