I AM JUST returned from visiting the Islands. They form an agreeable marsh; never was mud better concealed by flowers. A shallow, left dry during the summer, owing to the channels that intersect it serving as drains to the soil, planted with superb groves of birch, and covered with numerous charming villas—such is the tract called the Islands. The avenues of birch, which, together with pines, are the only trees indigenous to these icy plains, create an illusion that might lead the traveler to imagine himself in an English park. This vast garden, overspread with “villas” and “cottages,” serves instead of the country for the inhabitants of Petersburg: it is the camp of the courtiers, thickly inhabited during a brief portion of the year, and totally deserted during the remainder.
The district of the Islands is reached by various excellent carriage roads, connected with bridges thrown over the different arms of the sea.
In wandering among its shady alleys, it is not difficult to imagine one’s self in the countryside, but it is a monotonous and artificial country. No undulations of the ground, always the same kind of trees,—how is it possible to produce pictorial effect from such materials! Under this zone, the plants of the hothouse, the fruit of the tropics, and even the gold and precious stones of the mines, are less rare than our commonest forest trees. With wealth, everything may be procured here that can exist under glass, and this is much towards furnishing the scenery of a fairy tale, but it is not sufficient to make a park. One of the groves of chestnut or beech which beautify our hills would be a marvel in Petersburg. Italian houses surrounded by Laponian trees, and filled with the flowers of all countries, form a contrast which is singular rather than agreeable.
The Parisians, who never forget Paris, call the tract of the Islands the Russian Champs Elysées, but it is larger, more rural, and yet more adorned and more artificial than our Parisian promenade. It is also farther distant from the fashionable quarters, and includes both town and country. At one moment, you may suppose yourself looking upon real woods, fields, and villages; in the next, the view of houses in the shape of temples, of pilasters forming the framework of hot-houses, of colonnaded palaces, of theaters with antique peristyles, prove that you have not left the city.
The Russians are rightly proud of a garden raised at so much expense on the spongy soil of Petersburg. But if Nature is conquered, she remembers her defeat, and submits with a bad grace.
I should insist less on the disadvantages of this unflavored land, I should not regret so greatly, while traveling in the North, the sun of the South, if the Russians affected less to undervalue the gifts of which their country is deprived. Their perfect content extends even to the climate and the soil; naturally given to boasting, they have the folly to glory even in the physical as well as the social aspect which surrounds them. These pretensions prevent my bearing as resignedly as I ought to do, and as I had intended, with all the inconveniences of northern countries.
The delta formed between the city and one of the embouchures of the Neva, is now entirely covered by this species of park; it is nevertheless included within the precincts of Petersburg: the Russian cities embrace the country also. This tract would have become one of the most populous quarters of the new capital, had the plan of the founder been more exactly followed. But, little by little, Petersburg receded from the river, southward, in the hope of escaping the inundations; and the marshy isles have been reserved exclusively for the summer residences of the most distinguished courtiers. These residences are half concealed by water and snow for nine months of the year, during which time the wolves roam freely round the pavilion of the empress; but during the remaining three months, nothing can exceed the profusion of flowers which the houses exhibit. Nevertheless, under all this factitious elegance, the character of the people betrays itself; a passion for display is the ruling passion of the Russians: thus, in their drawing rooms, the flowers are not disposed in such manner as may render the interior of the apartment more agreeable, but so as to attract admiration from without; precisely the contrary of what we see in England, where, above all things, people shrink from hanging out a sign in the streets. The English are, of all the people on the earth, those who have best known how to substitute taste for style: their public buildings are chefs-d’oeuvre of the ridiculous; their private houses are models of elegance and good sense.
Among the Islands, all the houses and all the roads resemble each other. The shade of the birch trees is transparent, but under the sun of the North a very thick foliage is not required. Canals, lakes, meadows, groves, cottages, villas, and alleys, follow each other in constant succession. This dreamy landscape pleases without interesting, without piquing the curiosity; but it gives the idea of repose, and repose is a precious thing at the court of Russia, even though it be not valued there as it ought to be.
A distant pine forest rears at intervals its thin and spiry foliage above the roofs of some villas, built of planks and painted. These remembrances of solitude pierce through the ephemeral gaiety of the gardens, as though to witness to the rigor of winter, and the neighborhood of Finland.
The aim of civilization in the North is serious. There society is the fruit, not of human pleasures, not of interests and passions easily satisfied, but of a will, ever persisting and ever thwarted, which urges the people to incomprehensible efforts. There, if individuals unite together, it is to struggle with a rebellious nature, which unwillingly responds to the demands made upon her.
This dullness and stubbornness in the external world engender a gloom which accounts to me for the tragedies in the political world so frequent at this court. Here the drama is enacted in actual life, whilst the theater is occupied with farce. Empty amusements are those alone permitted in Russia. Under such an order of things, real life is too serious an affair to allow of a grave and thoughtful literature. Low comedy, the idyll, and the apologue well veiled, can alone flourish in presence of so terrible a reality. If in this inhospitable clime the precautions of despotism shall yet further increase the difficulties of existence, all happiness will be taken from man —repose will become impossible. Peace, felicity—these words here are as vague as is that of Paradise. Idleness without ease, inertia without quiet—such are the inevitable results of the Boreal Autocracy.
The Russians enjoy but very little of the country which they have created at the gate of their city. The women live the same way in the summer at the Islands, as they do in the winter in Petersburg. They rise late, spend the day at their toilets, the evening in visits, and gamble through the night. To forget themselves, to lose themselves in a round of excitement, is the apparent end of their existence.
The summer of the Islands commences in the middle of June and lasts till the end of August. During these two months there is not generally (though with the exception of the present year) more than a week of hot weather. The evenings are damp, the night atmosphere clear, but cloudy above, the days gray and misty. Life would here become unbearably dull and melancholy to the individual who should allow himself to reflect. In Russia, to converse is to conspire, to think is to revolt: thought is not merely a crime, it is a misfortune also.
Man thinks only with a view of ameliorating his lot and that of his fellows, but when he can do nothing and change nothing, thought does but prey upon and envenom the mind, for lack of other employment. This is the reason why, in the Russian world of high society, people of all ages join in the dance.
As soon as the summer is over, a rain, fine as the points of needles, falls for weeks without any cessation. In two days the birch trees of the Islands may be seen stripped of their leaves, the houses of their flowers and their inhabitants, and the roads and bridges are crowded with carriages, droshkies, and carts engaged in the removal of furniture, all the different kinds of which are heaped together with a slovenliness and disorder natural to the Slavic race. It is thus that the rich man of the North, awaking from the too fleeting illusions of his summer, flies before the northeast wind, leaving the bears and wolves to re-enter into possession of their legitimate domain. Silence resumes its ancient rights over these icy swamps, and for nine months, the frivolous society of the city of wood take refuge in the city of stone. From this change of season they experience little inconvenience; for in Petersburg the snows of the winter nights reflect almost as much light as is shed by the summer’s sun, and the Russian stoves give more heat than its obliquely falling rays.
That which yearly occurs in the Islands will be the fate one day of the entire city. Should this capital, without roots in history, be forgotten for even a brief space by the sovereign, should a new policy direct his attention elsewhere, the granite hid under the water would crumble away, the inundated low lands would return to their natural state, and the guests of solitude would again take possession of their lair.
These ideas occupy the mind of every foreigner who traverses the streets of Petersburg; no one believes in the duration of the marvelous city. But little meditation (and what traveler worthy of his occupation does not meditate?) enables the mind to prefigure such a war, such a change in the course of policy, as would cause this creation of Peter I to disappear like a soap bubble in the air.
In no other place have I been so impressed with the instability of human things. Often in Paris and in London have I said to myself, a time will come when this noisy abode will be more silent than Athens or Rome, Syracuse or Carthage; but to no man is it given to foresee the hour or the immediate cause of the destruction; whereas, the disappearing of St. Petersburg may be foreseen, it may take place tomorrow, in the midst of the triumphant songs of its victorious people. The decline of other capitals follows the destruction of their inhabitants, but this will perish at the moment even when the Russians will see their power extending. I believe in the duration of Petersburg, just as I believe in that of a political system, or in the constancy of man. This is what cannot be said of any other city in the world.
What a tremendous power is that which can thus cause a metropolis to spring up in the wilderness, and which, with one word, can restore to solitude all that it has taken! Here real existence seems to belong only to the sovereign: the fate, the power, the will of an entire people are all centered in one single head. The emperor is the personification of social power; beneath him reigns the equality that forms the dream of the modern Gallo-American democrats, the Fourriérists, &c. But the Russians acknowledge a cause of storm that is unknown to others, the wrath of this emperor. Republican or monarchial tyranny is preferable to autocratic equality. I fear nothing so much as a strict logic applied to politics. If France has been financially prosperous during the last ten years, it is, perhaps, because the apparent absurdity which presides over her affairs is a high practical wisdom: action, instead of speculation, now governs us.
In Russia the spirit of despotism always exerts itself with a mathematical rigor, and the result of such extreme proceeding is an extreme oppression. In beholding this effect of an inflexible policy, we feel shocked, and ask ourselves, with a kind of terror, how comes it that there is so little humanity in the actions of man? But to tremble is not to disdain; we never despise that which excites our fear.
In contemplating Petersburg, and in reflecting on the dreadful existence of the inhabitants of this camp of granite, one might be led to doubt the compassion of the Deity. There is here presented a mystery that is incomprehensible, and at the same time a greatness that is prodigious. Despotism thus organized becomes an inexhaustible subject for observation and meditation. This colossal empire, which rises before me all at once in the east of Europe—of that Europe, where society is suffering from the decay of all recognized authority—appears to me like a resurrection. I feel as though in the presence of some nation of the Old Testament, and I stop with fear, mingled with curiosity, before the feet of the antediluvian giant.
The first view of society in Russia shows that its arrangements, as contrived by the Russians themselves, are only adapted to their own social system: he must be a Russian who would live in Russia, even though outwardly everything may appear to pass as in other places. The difference lies in the foundations of things.
It was a review of the fashionable world which I took this evening at the Islands. The fashionable world, they say, is the same everywhere; nevertheless each society has a soul, and this soul will be instructed, like any other, by the fairy which is called civilization, and which is nothing more than the customs of the age.
This evening, all the city of Petersburg, that is to say, the court and its followers, were at the Islands; not for the pure pleasure of promenading on a fine day, such a pleasure would appear insipid to the Russian courtiers, but to see the packet boat of the empress, a spectacle of which they never tire. Here every sovereign is a god, every princess is an Armida or a Cleopatra. The train of these changeable divinities never changes: it is composed of a people ever equally faithful; the reigning prince is always in fashion with the Russian people.
Nevertheless, these submissive men, let them say and do their best, are forced and constrained in their enthusiasm. A people without liberty has instincts but not sentiments; and their instincts often manifest themselves in an officious and little-delicate manner. The emperors of Russia must be overwhelmed with submission: sometimes the incense wearies the idol. In fact, such worship admits of terrible interludes. The Russian government is an absolute monarchy moderated by assassination; and when the prince is not under the influence of lassitude, he is under that of terror. He lives, therefore, between fear and disgust. If the pride of the despot must have slaves, the feelings of the man must yearn for equals; but a czar has no equals: etiquette and jealousy maintain invidious guard around his solitary heart. He is more to be pitied than even his people, especially if he possesses any amiable qualities.
I hear much boast made of the domestic happiness of the Emperor Nicholas, but I see in it the consolations of a superior mind, rather than the proof of real happiness. Consolation is not felicity; on the contrary, the remedy proves the evil: an emperor of Russia must have a heart like other men if he has one at all. So much for the overlauded private virtues of the Emperor Nicholas.
This evening the empress, having proceeded from Peterhof by sea, landed at her pavilion on the Islands, where she will remain until the marriage of her daughter, which is to be celebrated tomorrow, in the new Winter Palace. While she remains at the Islands, the leafy shade which surrounds her pavilion serves as a shelter during the day for her regiment of chevalier guards, one of the finest in the army.
We arrived too late to see her leave her sacred vessel, but we found the crowd still under the excitement caused by the rapid transit of the Imperial star. The only tumults possible in Russia are those caused by the struggles of flatterers. This evening, the human effervescence resembled the agitation of the waves, that continue boiling in the track of some mighty vessel long after she has entered port.
At last, then, I have breathed the air of the court! though the deities who exhale it upon mortals are still unseen.
It is now one o’clock in the morning; the sun is about to rise, and I cannot yet sleep: I will, therefore, finish my night as I commenced it, by writing without lights.
Notwithstanding Russian pretensions to elegance, foreigners cannot find in all Petersburg one hotel that is endurable. The great lords bring with them, from the interior of the empire, a suite which is always numerous. Man is their property and their luxury. The moment the valets are left alone in the apartments of their masters, they squat themselves, in Oriental fashion, on the seats and couches, which they fill with vermin. These creatures pass into the walls and floors, and in a few days the house becomes infested past all remedy; for the impossibility of airing the houses in winter perpetuates the evil from year to year.
The new Imperial Palace, built at such cost of life and money, is already full of loathsome insects. It might be said, that the wretched workmen who were killed in order to ornament with greater celerity the habitation of their master, have avenged their own death by inoculating with their vermin those homicidal walls. If the palace is infected by these nocturnal foes, how should I be able to sleep at Coulon’s? I have given up the idea; but the clearness of the night consoles me for everything.
On returning from the Islands about midnight, I again went out on foot, and occupied my mind with reviewing the scenes and conversations which had most interested me during the day; of these I will presently give the summary.
My solitary walk led me to the beautiful street called the Nevsky Prospect. I saw in the twilight, shining from afar, the little pillars of the tower of the Admiralty, surmounted with its lofty metallic spire, a Christian minaret more taper than any Gothic steeple. It is gilded all over with the gold of the ducats sent as a present to the Emperor Peter I by the States of the Netherlands.
The revolting dirtiness of my inn-chamber, and the almost fabulous magnificence of that building, present a correct picture of Petersburg. Contrasts are not wanting in a city where Europe and Asia exhibit themselves to each other in mutual spectacle. The people are handsome. The men of pure Slavic race, brought from the interior by the rich nobles, who either retain them in their service, or permit them for a certain period to carry on various trades in the city, are remarkable for their fair hair, their rosy complexions, and yet more for their perfect profiles, which equal those of Grecian statues. Their eyes have the oval Asiatic shape, with the coloring of the North; they are generally of a light blue, and unite a singular expression of gentleness, grace, and cunning. This expression, always restless, gives to the iris those changing hues which vary from the green of the serpent, and the gray of the cat, to the black of the gazelle, though the ground color still remains blue. The mouth, adorned with a golden and silky mustache, is beautifully formed, and the teeth have a brilliant whiteness that lights up the whole countenance. They are sometimes sharp and pointed, when they resemble those of the tiger, but more commonly their shape is perfectly regular. The costume of these men is always original. It consists either of the Greek tunic, with a lively colored girdle, the Persian robe, or the short Russian pelisse lined with sheepskin, the wool of which is turned outwards or inwards according to the season.
The females of the lower orders are less handsome; but few are met in the streets, and those few present few attractions: they appear degraded and stupefied. It is a singular fact, that the men take pains with their dress, and the women neglect it: this is perhaps owing to the former being attached by service to the houses of the nobles. The latter have a clumsy gait; they wear heavy boots, which deform the foot: their figures are without elegance; and their complexions, unlike those of the men, lose all freshness and clearness even while they are yet young. Their little Russian coats, short, and open before, are trimmed with fur, which is almost always hanging in rags. This costume would be pretty if it was less shabby, and if the effect was not generally spoilt by deformity or revolting dirtiness of person. The national headdress of the Russian women is handsome, but it has become rare, being now only worn, I am told, by wet nurses, and by the ladies of the court on days of ceremony. It is a species of pasteboard tower, gilt, embroidered, and much widened at the top.
The accoutrements of the horses are picturesque, and the animals themselves show speed and blood; but the equipages that I saw this evening at the Islands, not excepting those of the highest nobles, were not elegant, nor even clean. This accounts to me for the disorder and carelessness of the servants of the hereditary grand duke, and for the clumsiness and wretched varnish of that prince’s carriages, which I noticed at Ems. Magnificence on a large scale, a gaudy luxury, gilded trappings, and an air of showy grandeur, are natural to the Russian nobles; but elegance, carefulness, and cleanliness, are things unknown.
I have listened this evening to several curious traits, illustrative of what we call the slavery of the Russian peasants. It is difficult for us to form a just idea of the real position of this class of men, who live in the possession of no acknowledged rights, and who yet form the nation. Deprived of everything by law, they are still not so much degraded morally as they are socially. They have good mental capacity, and sometimes even elevation of character; but, nevertheless, the principle which chiefly actuates their conduct through life is cunning. No one has a right to reproach them with this too natural consequence of their situation. Ever on their guard against their masters, who are constantly acting towards them with open and shameless bad faith, they compensate themselves by artifice for what they suffer through injustice. The relations between the peasantry and the owner of the soil, as well as their less immediate relations with the country, that is to say, with the emperor, would alone be a subject worthy of a long sojourn in the interior of Russia.
In many parts of the empire, the peasants believe themselves to belong to the soil, a condition of existence which appears to them natural, even when they have difficulty in understanding how man can be the property of man. In many other countries the peasants believe that the soil belongs to them. Such are the most happy, if they are not the most submissive of slaves. Not unfrequently, the peasants, when about to be sold send a deputation to some far-off master, of whose character for kindness reports have reached them, imploring him to buy them, their lands, their children, and their cattle; and if this lord, thus celebrated for his gentleness (I do not say his justice, for the sentiment of justice is unknown in Russia),—if this desirable lord has no money, they provide him with it, in order to be sure of belonging only to him. The benevolent lord, therefore, buys his new serfs with their own money; after which he exempts them from taxes for a certain number of years; thus indemnifying them for the price of their bodies, which they have paid to him in advance by furnishing the sum that represents the value of the domain to which they belong, and of which they have, as it were, obliged him to become the proprietor.
The greatest misfortune which can happen to these vegetating men is to see their native fields sold. They are always sold with the glebe, and the only advantage they have hitherto derived from the modern ameliorations of the law is, that they cannot now be sold without it. This provision is, however, notoriously evaded. Instead, for instance, of selling an entire estate, a few acres are often sold with one or two hundred men per acre. If the government becomes aware of such collusion it punishes the guilty parties, but it has seldom an opportunity of interfering; for between the crime and the supreme authority, that is, the emperor, are a whole multitude of people interested in concealing and perpetuating abuses. The proprietors suffer as much as the serfs from this state of things, especially those whose affairs are not in order. Estates are difficult to sell; so difficult, that a man who owes debts and is willing to pay them, is finally obliged to have recourse to the Imperial Bank, where he borrows the sum which he requires, the bank taking his property in mortgage. By this means the emperor becomes treasurer and creditor of all the Russian nobility; and the latter, thus curbed by supreme power, are placed in a situation which makes the fulfillment of their duties towards the people impossible.
On a certain day a nobleman declares his intention of selling an estate. The news of this project throws the district into alarm. The peasants send to their lord a deputation of the elders of their village, who cast themselves at his feet, imploring, with tears, that they may not be sold. “It must be,” replies the lord: “I cannot conscientiously augment the tax which my peasants pay, and nevertheless I am not rich enough to keep an estate which scarcely brings me in anything.”
“Is that all?” cry the deputies; “we then are wealthy enough to enable you to keep us.” Whereupon, of their own free will, they raise the rent to double the amount which they have paid from time immemorial. Other peasants, with less gentleness, and greater craft of character, revolt against their masters, solely with the hope of becoming serfs of the crown. This is the highest ambition of the Russian peasant.
To emancipate suddenly such men would be to set the country on fire. The moment that the serfs, separated from the land to which they are attached, were to see it sold, let, or cultivated without them, they would rise in a mass, crying that they were despoiled of their property.
It is but a short time ago that, in a remote village which was on fire, the peasants, who complained of the tyranny of their master, availed themselves of the disorder they had perhaps caused purposely, to seize his person, impale it, and roast it in the flames of the conflagration. For such acts the emperor usually orders the transportation of the entire village to Siberia. This is called, in Petersburg, peopling Asia.
When I reflect upon these, and a thousand other cruelties, which, with greater or less secrecy, take place daily in the bosom of this immense empire, where the distances equally favor oppression and revolt, I am ready to conceive a hatred against the land, the government, and the entire population: an indefinable sense of uneasiness takes possession of me, and I think only of flying.
The fortune of a wealthy man is here computed by the heads of his peasants. The man who is not free is coined; he is equivalent (on an average) to ten rubles a year to his proprietor, who is called free because he is the owner of serfs. There are districts where each peasant brings three and four times this sum to his master. In Russia, the human money alters in value, as, with us, the land, which doubles in price, when markets can be opened for its produce. Here, I involuntarily pass my time in calculating how many families it has taken to pay for a bonnet, a shawl, or a rosebush: nothing appears to me as it does elsewhere; everything seems tainted with blood. The number of human beings condemned to suffer, even unto death, in order to furnish the requisite quantity of stuff which forms the dress of some lovely woman at court, occupies my thoughts more than all her finery or her beauty. Absorbed in the labor of so painful a computation, I feel myself growing unjust. The most charming face reminds me, in spite of my efforts to banish such ideas, of those caricatures of Bonaparte which were spread all over Europe in 1815. At a little distance the colossal statue of the emperor appeared a simple likeness, but, on inspecting it more nearly, each feature was found to be composed of mutilated corpses.
In all countries, the poor work for the rich, who pay them for their labor; but these poor are not folded for life in some enclosures like mere herds of cattle; and, though obliged to toil at the labor which provides their children with daily bread, they at least enjoy a semblance of liberty; now semblance, or appearance, is almost everything to a being whose views are limited, but whose imagination is boundless. With us, the hireling has the right of changing his employers, his residence, and even his profession; but the Russian serf is a chattel of his lord’s; enlisted from birth to death in the service, his life represents to this proprietor a part and parcel of the sum necessary to supply the caprices and fantasies of fashion. Assuredly, in a state thus constituted, luxury is no longer innocent. All communities in which a middle class of society does not exist, ought to proscribe luxury as a scandal, for in well-organized lands, it is the profits which that class draws from the vanity of the superior classes which produce general opulence. If, as is anticipated, Russia should become a land of industrial arts, the relations between the serf and the owner of the soil will be modified, and a population of independent dealers and artisans will rise up between the nobles and the peasants, but at present, the commerce of the land is scarcely born; the manufacturers, merchants, and tradesmen, are almost all Germans.
It is here only too easy to be deceived by the appearances of civilization. If you look at the court and the people who are its votaries, you may suppose yourself among a nation far advanced in social culture and political economy; but when you reflect on the relations which exist between the different classes of society, when you observe how small is the number of these classes—finally, when you examine attentively the groundwork of manners and of things—you perceive the existence of a real barbarism, scarcely disguised under a magnificence which is revolting.
I do not reproach the Russians for being what they are, what I blame in them is, their pretending to be what we are. They are still uncultivated; this state would at least allow room for hope; but I see them incessantly occupied with the desire of mimicking other nations, and this they do after the true manner of monkeys, caricaturing what they copy. They thus appear to me spoilt for the savage state, and yet wanting in the requisites of civilization; and the terrible words of Voltaire or of Diderot, now forgotten in France, recur to my mind—“The Russians have rotted before they have ripened.”
At Petersburg, everything wears an air of opulence, grandeur, and magnificence; but if we should take this outward show for reality, we should find ourselves strangely deceived. Generally, the first effect of civilization is to render what may be called material life easy; but here everything is difficult:—a cunning apathy is the secret of existence.
If you wish to ascertain precisely what is to be seen in this great city, and if Schnitzler does not satisfy you, you will find no other guide[1]; no bookseller has on sale a complete directory to the curiosities of Petersburg; either the well-informed men whom you question have an interest in not answering you, or they have something else to do. The emperor, his health, his movements, the project with which he is ostensibly occupied, such are the only subjects worthy of the thoughts of a Russian who thinks at all. The catechism of the court is the only necessary knowledge. All take pleasure in rendering themselves agreeable to their master, by hiding some corner of truth from the eyes of travelers. No one has any idea of gratifying the curious; on the contrary, they love to deceive them by false data: it requires the talents of a great critic to travel to advantage in Russia. Under despotism, curiosity is synonymous with indiscretion. The empire is the emperor.
And yet this frightful extent of greatness was not sufficient for the Czar Peter. That man, not content with being the reason of his people, would also become their conscience. The sovereign who did not shrink before such a responsibility, and who, notwithstanding his long apparent or real hesitation, finally rendered himself culpable of so enormous an usurpation, has inflicted more evil on the world by this single outrage against the prerogatives of the priests, and the religious liberty of man, than he has conferred benefit on Russia by all his warlike and political talents, and his genius for the arts of industry. That emperor, type and model of the empire, and of the emperors in all ages, was a singular union of the great and the minute. With a lust for power, grasping as that of the most cruel tyrants of any age or nation, he united the ingenuity of the artisan in a degree that made him the rival of the best mechanics of his times; a sovereign scrupulously terrible, an eagle and an ant, a lion and a beaver:—this monarch, dreadful during life, now imposes himself on posterity as a species of saint, and tyrannizes over the judgments, as he formerly tyrannized over the acts of men. To pass an impartial opinion upon him is, at the present time, a sacrilege which is not without danger, even for a stranger, in Russia. I brave this danger every day; for of all yokes, the most insupportable to me is that which imposes the necessity of admiring. In Russia, power, unlimited as it is, entertains an extreme dread of censure, or even of free speech. An oppressor is of all others the man who most fears the truth; he only escapes ridicule by the terror and mystery with which he environs himself. Hence it is that there must be no speaking of persons here: one must not allude to the maladies of which the Emperors Peter III and Paul I died, any more than to the clandestine amours that certain malevolent persons have ascribed to the reigning emperor. The amusements of this prince are viewed only as relaxations from the cares of greatness, and with whatever consequences they may be attended to certain families, one must profess ignorance of them under pain of being accused of the greatest of all crimes in the eyes of a people composed of slaves and diplomatists—the crime of indiscretion.
I am impatient to see the empress. She is said to be a charming, though at the same time a frivolous and haughty personage. It needs both hauteur and levity to support an existence like hers. She neither interferes with, nor informs herself respecting public affairs; knowledge is worse than useless, when there is no power to act upon it. The empress follows the example of the other subjects of the emperor: all who are born Russians, or would live in Russia, must make silence upon public affairs the motto of their life. Secret conversations would be very interesting, but who dares indulge in them? To reflect and to discern would be to render oneself suspected.
M. Repnin governed the empire and the emperor: he has been out of favor for two years, and for two years Russia has not heard his name pronounced, though that name was previously in everybody’s mouth. In one day, he fell from the pinnacle of power into the lowest depth of obscurity. No one dared to remember that he was living, nor even to believe that he ever had lived. In Russia, on the day that a minister falls from favor, his friends become deaf and blind. A man is, as it were, buried the moment he appears to be disgraced. Russia does not know today if the minister who governed her yesterday exists. Under Louis XV the banishment of M. de Choiseul was a triumph; in Russia, the retirement of M. Repnin is a funeral.
To whom will the people one day appeal against the mute servility of the great? What an explosion of vengeance is not the conduct of this cringing aristocracy preparing against the autocratic power? What are the duties of the Russian noblesse? To adore the emperor, and to render themselves accomplices in the abuse of sovereign power that they themselves may continue to oppress the people? Is such the position that Providence has ordained them to occupy in the economy of this vast empire? They fill its posts of honor. What have they done to merit them? In the history of Russia, no one except the emperor has performed his part. The nobles, the clergy, and all the other classes of society, have each failed in their own. An oppressed people have always deserved the ills under which they suffer. Tyranny is the work of the nation. Either the civilized world will, before another fifty years, pass anew under the yoke of barbarians, or Russia will undergo a revolution more terrible than that the effects of which we are still feeling in western Europe.
I can perceive that I am feared here, which I attribute to its being known that I write under the influence of my convictions. No stranger can set foot in this country without immediately feeling that he is weighed and judged. “This is a sincere man,” they think, “therefore he must be dangerous.” Under the government of the lawyers,[2] a sincere man is only useless!
“An indefinite hatred of despotism reigns in France,” they say; “but it is exaggerated and unenlightened, therefore we will brave it. The day, however, that a traveler, who convinces because he himself believes, shall tell the real abuses which he cannot fail to discover among us, we shall be seen as we really are. France now barks at us without knowing us; when she does know us, she will bite.”
The Russians, no doubt, do me too great honor by the in-quietude which, notwithstanding their profound dissimulation, they cannot conceal from me. I do not know whether I shall publish what I think of their country; but I do know that they only do themselves justice in fearing the truths that I could publish.
The Russians have everything in name, and nothing in reality. They have civilization, society, literature, the drama, the arts and sciences—but they have no physicians. In case of illness, you must either prescribe for yourself, or call in a foreign practitioner. If you send for the nearest doctor, you are a dead man, for medical art in Russia is in its infancy. With the exception of the physician of the emperor, who, I am told, is, though a Russian, skillful, the only doctors who would not assassinate you are the Germans attached to the service of the princes. But the princes live in a state of perpetual motion. It is often impossible to ascertain where they may be; or, when that is known, to send twenty, forty, or sixty versts (two French leagues are equal to seven versts), after them. There are, therefore, practically speaking, no physicians in Russia. Should even the physician be sought at the known residence of his prince, and not be found there, there is no further hope. “The doctor is not here.” No other answer can be obtained. In Russia, everything serves to show that reserve is the favorite virtue of the land. An opportunity for appearing discreet cannot but offer to those who know how to seize it, and what Russian would not do himself credit at so little cost? The projects and the movements of the great, and of those attached to their persons by so confidential an office as that of physician, ought not to be known, unless officially declared, to persons who are born courtiers, and with whom obedience is a passion. Here, mystery supplies the place of merit.
The most able of these doctors of the princes are far inferior to the least known among the medical men of our hospitals. The skill of the most learned practitioners will rust at court: nothing can supply the place of experience gained by the bedside of the sick. I could read the secret memoirs of a Russian court physician with great interest, but I would not follow his prescriptions. Such men would make better chroniclers than doctors. When, therefore, a stranger falls sick among this soi-disant civilized people, his best plan is to consider himself among savages, and to leave everything to nature.
On returning to my hotel this evening, I found a letter, which has very agreeably surprised me. Through the influence of our ambassador, I am to be admitted tomorrow to the imperial chapel, to witness the marriage of the grand duchess.
To appear at court before having been presented, is contrary to all the laws of etiquette, and I was far from hoping for such a favor. The Emperor has, however, granted it. Count Voronzov, Grand Master of the Ceremonies, without pre-informing me, for he did not wish to amuse me with a false hope, had dispatched a courier to Peterhof, which is ten leagues from Petersburg, to solicit His Majesty in my favor. This kind consideration has not been unavailing. The emperor has given permission for me to be present at the marriage, in the chapel of the court, and I am to be presented, without ceremony, at the ball on the same evening.
[1]Schnitzler is author of the best work on Russian statistics that has been written.
[2]Alluding to France under King Louis Philippe.—Trans.