IT WAS ON the day before yesterday, between nine and ten o’clock, that I obtained the liberty of entering Petersburg.
The city, whose inhabitants are not early risers, gave me, at that hour of day, the idea of a vast solitude. Now and then I met a few droshkies. The drivers were dressed in the costume of the country. The singular appearance of these men, their horses and carriages, struck me more than anything else on my first view of the city.
The ordinary costume and general appearance of the lower classes of Petersburg, not the porters, but the workmen, coachmen, small tradespeople, &c. &c., is as follows:—On the head is worn either a cap, formed somewhat in the shape of a melon; or a narrow-brimmed hat, low crowned, and wider at the top than the bottom. This headdress slightly resembles a woman’s turban. It becomes the younger men. Both young and old wear beards. Those of the beaux are silken and carefully combed; those of the old and the careless appear dirty and matted. Their eyes have a peculiar expression, strongly resembling the deceitful glance of Asiatics—so strongly, that in casually observing them you might fancy yourself in Persia.
Their locks, worn long on each side, fall upon the cheeks and conceal the ears; but their hair is cut closely off from the nape of the neck upwards, which original mode of wearing it leaves the neck behind quite bare, for they have no cravat. The beard sometimes falls upon the breast, sometimes it is cut close round the chin. Much value is attached to this ornament, which accords with the tout ensemble of the costume better than with the collars, the frock coats, and the waistcoats of our young modern fops.
The Russian people have a natural perception of the picturesque; their customs, furniture, utensils, costume, and figure would all furnish subject for the painter, and the corner of every street in Petersburg might suggest material for a picture graceful in its kind.
But to complete the description of the national costume— in place of our frock and greatcoats, is substituted the caftan, a long and loose Persian robe made of gray, olive, or yet more commonly, of blue cloth. The folds of this robe, which has no collar, but is cut close to the neck, form an ample drapery, drawn together round the loins by a brightly colored silken or woolen girdle. The boots are large, and take the form of the foot. On the legs, the high leather falls down, or is doubled back over itself, in not ungraceful folds.
The movements of the men whom I met were stiff and constrained; every gesture expressed a will which was not their own. The morning is the time for errands, and not one individual appeared to be walking on his own account. I observed few good-looking women, and heard no girlish voices; everything was dull and regular as in a barrack. Military discipline reigns throughout Russia. The aspect of the country makes me regret Spain as much as though I had been born an Andalusian: it is not however the heat which I want, for that here is almost suffocating; it is joy and light.
Now appears a cavalry officer passing at full gallop to bear an order to some commanding officer; now a Feldjäger, carrying an order to some provincial governor, perhaps at the other extremity of the empire, whither he proceeds in a kibitka, a little Russian chariot, without springs or stuffed seat. This vehicle, driven by an old bearded coachman, rapidly conveys the courier, whose rank would prevent his using a more commodious equipage had he one at his disposal. Next are seen foot soldiers returning from exercise to their quarters, to receive orders from their captain. One only sees superior bureaucrats ordering inferior bureaucrats. This automaton population resembles one side of a chessboard, where a single individual causes the movements of all the pieces, but where the adversary is invisible. One neither moves nor breathes here except by an Imperial order; consequently, everything is dull, formal, and spiritless. Silence presides over and paralyzes life. Officers, coachmen, Cossacks, serfs, courtiers, all servants under the same master, blindly obey the orders which they do not understand; it is certainly the perfection of discipline; but the sight of such perfection does not gratify me; so much regularity can only be obtained by the entire absence of independence. This part of the world seems to me under the shadow of death.
Among a people thus bereft of time and of will, we see only bodies without souls, and tremble to think that for so vast a multitude of arms and legs there is only one head. Despotism is a union of impatience and of indolence; with a little more forbearance on the part of the governing power, and of activity on the part of the people, equal results might be obtained at a far cheaper cost; but what then would become of tyranny?
If I am reproached for confounding despotism with tyranny, I answer that I do so with design. They are such near relatives, that they never fail to unite in secret to the misfortune of mankind. Under a despotism, tyranny may maintain itself the longer, because it preserves the mask.
When Peter the Great established what is here called the chin, that is to say, when he applied the military system to the general administration of the empire, he changed his nation into a regiment of mutes, of which he declared himself and his successors the hereditary colonels.
Let the reader imagine the ambition, the rivalry, and all the other passions of war in operation during a state of peace; let his mind conceive an absence of all that constitutes social and domestic happiness; and, in place of these, let him picture to himself the universal agitation of an ever-restless though secret intrigue,—secret, because the mask is essential to success; finally, let him realize the idea of the almost complete apparent triumph of the will of one man over the will of God, and he will understand Russia. Russian government is the discipline of a military camp substituted to the order of the city; it is the state of siege turned into the normal state of society.
As the morning advances the city becomes more noisy, without however appearing more gay; one sees only carriages, little distinguished for elegance, carrying at the full speed of their two, four, or six horses, people always in haste, because their life is passed in thus making their way. Pleasure without any ulterior aim—pleasure for its own sake, is here a thing unknown.
Thus, almost all the great artistes who visit Russia to reap the fruit of the fame they have acquired elsewhere, never remain beyond a very brief period; if ever they prolong their stay, they wrong their talents. The air of this country is unfavorable to the finer arts. Productions that spring spontaneously elsewhere, will here only grow in the hothouse. Russian art will never be a hardy plant.
At the Hotel Coulon, I found a degenerated French inn-keeper. His house is at present nearly full, on account of the marriage of the Grand Duchess Marie; indeed, he appeared almost annoyed at being obliged to receive another guest, and consequently gave himself little trouble to accommodate me. After several parleys, I was at length established on the second floor, in suffocating apartments, consisting of an entrée, a salon, and a bedchamber, the whole without curtains or window blinds, though there is a sun for twenty-two hours daily above the horizon, the oblique rays of which penetrate more fully into the houses than the sun of Africa, which falls direct upon the roofs. The air of this lodging resembles that of a limekiln choked with dust, and charged with exhalations of insects mingled with musk, forming altogether an atmosphere that is not to be endured.
Scarcely was I installed in this abode than (the fatigue of the night having got the better of my curiosity, which usually impels me to sally forth and lose myself in a large unknown city) I lay down, wrapped in a cloak, on an immense leather sofa and slept profoundly during—three minutes.
At the end of that time I woke in a fever, and on casting my eyes upon the cloak, what a sight awaited them!—a brown but living mass:—things must be called by their proper name —I was covered, I was devoured with bugs. Russia is, in this respect, not a whit inferior to Spain: but in the South we can both console and secure ourselves in the open air; here we must remain imprisoned with the enemy, and the war is consequently more bloody. I began throwing off my clothes and calling for help. What a prospect for the night! This thought made me cry out more lustily. A Russian waiter appeared. I made him understand that I wished to see his master. The master kept me waiting a long time, and when he at length did come, and was informed of the nature of my trouble, he began to laugh, and soon left the room, telling me that I should become accustomed to it, for that it was the same everywhere in Petersburg. He first advised me, however, never to seat myself on a Russian sofa, because the domestics, who always carry about with them legions of insects, sleep on these articles of furniture. To tranquilize me, he further stated, that the vermin would not follow me if I kept at a proper distance from the furniture in which they had fixed their abode.
The inns of Petersburg resemble caravansarais, where the traveler is simply housed, but not waited upon, unless by his own servants. Mine, being ignorant of the Russian language, is not only useless to me but troublesome, for I have to take care of him as well as myself!
However, his Italian quickness soon discovered in one of the dark corridors of this walled desert, called Hotel Coulon, a footman, out of place, who speaks German, and whom the keeper of the hotel recommended. I engaged him, and told him of my distress. He immediately procured for me a light iron bedstead, the mattress of which I had stuffed with the freshest straw that could be obtained, and caused the four feet to be placed in as many jars of water, in the middle of the chamber, from whence I also directed the furniture to be removed. Thus prepared for the night, I dressed, and attended by the footman, whom I had desired to forbear directing me, I issued from my magnificent hotel—a palace without, and an ornamented stable within.
The Hotel Coulon opens on a kind of square, which is tolerably lively for this city. On one side of the square stands the new Michael Palace, the stately abode of the Grand Duke Michael, brother of the emperor. It was built for the Emperor Alexander, who never inhabited it. The other sides of the square are enclosed by fine ranges of buildings with noble streets opening between. Scarcely had I passed the new Michael Palace when I found myself before the old. It is a vast, square, and gloomy building, differing in all respects from the elegant modern edifice of the same name.
If the men are silent in Russia, the stones speak with a lamentable voice. I am not surprised that the Russians neglect their ancient architectural monuments; these are witnesses of their history, which, for the most part, they are glad to forget. When I observed the black steps, the deep canals, the massive bridges, and the deserted porticoes of this ill-omened palace, I asked its name; and the answer called to my mind the catastrophe which placed Alexander on the throne, while all the circumstances of the dark scene which terminated the reign of Paul I presented themselves to my imagination.
Nor was this all: by a sort of savage irony there had been placed opposite the principal gate of the sinister edifice, before the death, and by the order of the Emperor Paul, the equestrian statue of his brother Peter III, another victim whose memory the emperor delighted to honor in order to dishonor that of his mother. What tragedies are played in cold blood in this land, where ambition and even hate are calm in appearance! With the people of the South, their passion reconciles me, in some measure, to their cruelty; but the calculating reserve and the coldness of the men of the North, add to crime the varnish of hypocrisy. Snow is a mask. Here man appears gentle because he is impassive; but murder without hate inspires me with more horror than vindictive assassination. The more nearly I can recognize an involuntary impulse in the commission of evil, the more I feel consoled. Unfortunately, it was the calculation of interest and prudence, and not the impulses of anger, which presided over the murder of Paul. Good Russians pretend that the conspirators had only intended to place him in prison. I have seen the secret door opening into the garden, which led to the apartment of the emperor by a private staircase, up which Pahlen caused the assassins to ascend. His communication with them on the evening before, was to this effect:—“You will either have killed the emperor by five o’clock tomorrow morning, or you will be denounced by me to the emperor, at half-past five, as conspirators.” The result of this eloquent and laconic harangue need not be inquired.
At five o’clock on the following morning, Alexander was an emperor, and also an imputed parricide, although he had only consented (this is true, I believe) to the confinement of his father, in order to save his mother from prison and perhaps death, to protect himself from a similar fate, and to preserve his country from the rage and caprice of an insane autocrat.
At the present day, the Russians pass the old Michael Palace without daring to look at it. In the schools and elsewhere, the death of the Emperor Paul is forbidden to be mentioned or even believed.
I am astonished that this palace of inconvenient recollections has not been pulled down. The traveler congratulates himself at the sight of a monument whose antique appearance is remarkable in a land where despotism renders everything uniform and new; where the reigning notion effaces daily the traces of the past. Its square and solid form, its deep moats, tragic associations, secret gates, and staircases favorable to crime, impart to it an imposing air, which is a rare advantage in Petersburg. At each step I take I am amazed to observe the confusion that has been everywhere made in this city between two arts so very different as those of architecture and decoration. Peter the Great and his successors seem to have taken their capital for a theater.
I was struck with the startled air of my guide, when I questioned him, in the most easy and natural manner that I could assume, on the events that had taken place in the old palace. The physiognomy of this man replied, “it is easy to see you are a newcomer.” Surprise, fear, mistrust, affected innocence, pretended ignorance, the experience of an old soldier who would not easily be duped, took possession, by turns, of his countenance, and made it a book equally instructive and amusing to peruse. When your spy is at fault by reason of your apparent security, the expression of his face is truly grotesque, for he believes himself compromised by you so soon as he sees that you do not fear being compromised by him. The spy thinks only of his vocation; and if you escape his nets, he begins at once to imagine that he is going to fall into yours.
A promenade through the streets of Petersburg, under the charge of a domestique de place, is not without interest, and little resembles a progress through the capitals of other civilized lands. One thing is singularly connected with and dependent on another in a state governed with so close a logic as that which presides over the policy of Russia.
After leaving the old and tragical Michael Palace, I crossed a large square resembling the Champ de Mars at Paris, so spacious is it and so empty. On one side is a public garden, on the other a few houses; there is sand instead of pavement in the middle of the area, and dust in every part of it. This immense square, the form of which is vague and undefined, extends to the Neva, near which termination is a bronze statue of Suvorov.
The Neva, its bridges and quays, form the real glory of Petersburg. The scene here is so vast, that all the rest seems little in comparison. The Neva is like a vessel so full that its brim disappears under the water, which is ready to flow over on every side. Venice and Amsterdam appear to me better protected against the sea than St. Petersburg.
The vicinity of a river, large as a lake, and which flows on a level with the land through a marshy plain, lost in the mists of the atmosphere and the vapors of the sea, was assuredly of all the sites in the world the least favorable for the foundation of a capital. The water will here, sooner or later, teach a lesson to human pride. The granite itself is no security against the work of winters in this humid icehouse, where the foundations of rock and the ramparts of the famous citadel built by Peter the Great, have already twice given way. They have been repaired, and will be yet again, in order to preserve this chef-d’oeuvre of human pride and human will.
I wished at once to cross the bridge, in order to examine it more closely; but my servant first conducted me in face of the fortress, to the house of Peter the Great, which is separated from it by a road and an open piece of ground.
It is a cabin, preserved, as is said, in the same state as that in which the emperor left it. In the citadel, the emperors are now buried, and the prisoners of state detained—singular manner of honoring the dead! In thinking of all the tears shed there, under the tombs of the sovereigns of Russia, one is reminded of the funerals of some Asian kings. A tomb bedewed with blood would, in my eyes, be less impious: tears flow for a longer period, and are perhaps accompanied with deeper pangs.
During the time that the Imperial artisan inhabited the cabin, his future capital was being built beneath his eye. It should be admitted in his praise, that, at that period, he thought much less of the palace than of the city.
One of the chambers of this illustrious cottage—that, namely, which was the workshop of the princely carpenter— is now transformed into a chapel. It is entered with as much reverence as are the most sacred churches in the empire. The Russians are ever ready to make saints of their heroes. They delight in confusing the dreadful virtues of their masters with the benevolent power of their patrons, and endeavor to view the cruelties of history through the veil of faith.
Another Russian hero, in my opinion little deserving of admiration, has been sanctified by the Greek priests; I mean Alexander Nevsky—a model of prudence, but a martyr neither to piety nor to generosity. The national church has canonized this wise rather than heroic prince—this Ulysses among the saints. An enormous convent has been built around his relics.
The tomb, enclosed within the church of St. Alexander, is in itself an edifice. It consists of an altar of massive silver, surmounted with a species of pyramid of the same metal, which rises to the vault of a vast church. The convent, the church, and the cenotaph, form one of the wonders of Russia. I contemplated them with more astonishment than admiration; for though the costliness of this pious work is immense, the rules of taste and of art have been little heeded in its construction.
In the cabin of the czar, I was shown a boat of his own building, and several other objects religiously preserved, and placed under the guard of a veteran soldier. In Russia, churches, palaces, public places, and many private houses, are entrusted to the keeping of military pensioners. These unfortunate beings would be left without means of subsistence in their old age, unless they were, on leaving the barracks, converted into porters. In such posts they retain their long military capotes, which are made of coarse wool, and are generally much worn and dirty. At each visit that you make, men, thus clad, receive you at the gates of the public buildings and at the doors of the houses. They are specters in uniform that serve to remind one of the discipline which here rules over everything. Petersburg is a camp metamorphosed into a city. The veteran who kept guard in the Imperial cottage, after having lighted several wax tapers in the chapel, led me to the sleeping apartment of Peter the Great, emperor of all the Russias. A carpenter of our days would not lodge his apprentice in such a place.
This glorious austerity illustrates the epoch and the country as much as the man. In Russia, at that period, everything was sacrificed to the future; all were employed in building the palaces of their yet unborn masters; and the original founders of the magnificent edifices, not experiencing themselves the wants of luxury, were content to be the purveyors of the future civilization, and took pride in preparing fitting abodes for the unknown potentates who were to follow them. There is certainly a greatness of mind evidenced in this care which a chieftain and his people take for the power, and even the vanity, of the generations that are yet to come. The reliance which the living have thus placed in the glory of their distant posterity has something about it which is noble and original. It is a disinterested and poetical sentiment, far loftier than the respect which men and nations are accustomed to entertain for their ancestors.
Elsewhere, great cities abound with monuments raised in memory of the past. St. Petersburg, in all its magnificence and immensity, is a trophy raised by the Russians to the greatness of the future. The hope which produces such efforts appears to me sublime. Never, since the construction of the Jewish temple, has the faith of a people in its own destinies raised up from the earth a greater wonder than St. Petersburg. And what renders more truly admirable this legacy left by one man to his ambitious country, is, that it has been ratified by history.
The prophecy of Peter the Giant, sculptured upon blocks of granite reared in the sea, has been fulfilled before the eyes of the universe. This is the first instance in which pride has appeared to me really worthy of admiration.
The history of Russia does not, however, date, as the ignorant and superficial in Europe seem to suppose, from the reign of Peter I; it is Moscow which explains St. Petersburg.
The deliverance of Muscovy, after long ages of invasion, and, afterwards, the siege and capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, the determined struggles with Sweden, and many other brilliant as well as patient deeds of arms, justified the proud attitude of Peter the Great, and the humble confidence of his people. Faith in the unknown is always imposing. This man of iron had a right to put his trust in the future: characters like his produce those results which others only imagine. I can see him, in all the simplicity of greatness, seated in the threshold of this cabin, planning and preparing against Europe, a city, a nation, and a history. The grandeur of Petersburg is not unmeaning. This mighty metropolis, ruling over its icy marshes, in order from thence to rule the world, is superb—more superb to the mind than to the eye! Yet it may not be forgotten, that one hundred thousand men, victims of obedience, were lost in converting the pestilential swamps into a capital!
On leaving the house of Peter the Great, I again passed before the bridge of the Neva (which leads to the Islands), and entered the celebrated fortress of Petersburg.
I have already remarked that this edifice, of which the name alone inspires fear, has twice had its ramparts and its granite foundations undermined, although it is not yet one hundred forty years old. What a struggle! The stones here seem to suffer violence like the men.
I was not permitted to see the prisons; there are dungeons under the water, and there are others under the roofs: all of which are full of human beings. I was only allowed to inspect the church, which encloses the tombs of the reigning family. My eyes were on these tombs while I was yet searching for them, so difficult was it to imagine that a square stone, of about the length and breadth of a bed, newly covered with a green cloth embroidered with the Imperial arms, could be the cemetery of the Empress Catherine I, of Peter I, Catherine II, and of so many other princes, down to the Emperor Alexander.
The Greek religion banishes sculpture from its churches, by which they lose in pomp and religious magnificence more than they gain in mystical character; while at the same time it accommodates itself to gilt work, chasings, and to pictures which do not show a very pure taste. The Greeks are the children of the Iconoclasts. In Russia they have ventured to mitigate the doctrine of their fathers; but they might have gone further than they have done.
In this funeral citadel, the dead appeared to me more free than the living. If it had been a philosophical idea which suggested the enclosing in the same tomb the prisoners of the emperor and the prisoners of death—the conspirators, and the monarchs against whom they conspired—I should respect it; but I see in it nothing more than the cynicism of absolute power—the brutal security of a despotism which feels itself safe. Strong in its superhuman power, it rises above the little humane delicacies, the observance of which is advisable in common governments. A Russian emperor is so full of what is due to himself that he cannot afford to have his justice lost sight of in that of God’s. We royalist revolutionaries of western Europe see only in a prisoner of state at Petersburg an innocent victim of despotism; the Russians view him as a reprobate. Every sound appeared to me a complaint; the stones groaned beneath my feet. Oh, how I pity the prisoners of this fortress! If the existence of the Russians confined under the earth, is to be judged of by inferences drawn from the existence of the Russians who live above, there is, indeed, cause to shudder! A thrill of horror passed through me as I thought that the most steadfast fidelity, the most scrupulous probity, could secure no man from the subterranean prisons of the citadel of Petersburg, and my heart dilated, and my respiration came more freely, as I repassed the moats which defend this gloomy abode, and separate it from the rest of the world.
Who would not pity the Russian people? They, I speak now of the higher classes, are living under the influences of an ignorance and of prejudices which they no longer possess. The affectation of resignation is the lowest depth of abjectness into which an enslaved nation can fall: revolt or despair would be doubtless more terrible, but less ignominious. Weakness so degraded that it dare not indulge itself even in complaint, that consolation of the lower animal creation, fear calmed by its own excess—these are moral phenomena which cannot be witnessed without calling forth tears of horror.
After visiting the sepulchre of the Russian sovereigns, I proceeded to the Catholic church, the services of which are conducted by Dominican monks. I went there to demand a mass for an anniversary which none of my travels have hitherto prevented my commemorating in a Catholic church. The Dominican convent is situated in the Nevsky Prospect, the finest street in Petersburg. The church is not magnificent, but decent; the cloisters are solitary, the courts encumbered with rubbish of mason work. An air of gloom reigns throughout the community, which, notwithstanding the toleration it enjoys, appears to possess little wealth, and still less sense of security. In Russia, toleration has no guarantee, either in public opinion, or in the constitution of the state: like everything else it is a favor conceded by one man; and that man may withdraw tomorrow what he has granted today.
While waiting for the prior in the church, I saw beneath my feet a stone on which was inscribed a name that awoke in me some emotion—Poniatowski! the royal victim of folly. That too credulous lover of Catherine II is buried here without any mark of distinction; but though despoiled of the majesty of the throne, there remains for him the majesty of misfortune. The troubles of this prince, his blind fatuity punished so cruelly, and the perfidious policy of his enemies, draw the attention of all Christians, and of all travelers to his obscure tomb.
Near to the exiled king has been placed the mutilated body of Moreau. The Emperor Alexander caused it to be brought there from Dresden. The idea of placing together the remains of two men so greatly to be pitied in order to unite in the same prayer the memory of their disappointed destiny, appears to me one of the greatest conceptions of this prince, who, be it remembered, appeared great when he entered a city from whence Napoleon was flying.
Towards four o’clock in the evening I began, for the first time, to recollect that I had not come to Russia merely to inspect curious monuments of art, and to enter into the reflections, more or less philosophical, which they might suggest; and I hastened to the French ambassador’s.
There I found my oversight had been great. The marriage of the Grand Duchess Marie was to take place on the day after the morrow, and I had arrived too late to be presented previously. To miss this ceremony of the court, in a land where the court is everything, would be to lose my journey.