THE FÊTE of Peterhof may be viewed under two different lights, the material and the moral; thus viewed, the same spectacle produces very different impressions.
I have never seen anything more beautiful to contemplate, yet at the same time more saddening to reflect upon, than this pretended national union of courtiers and peasants, who mingle together in the same rooms without any interchange of real sympathy. In a social point of view the sight has displeased me, because it seems to me that the emperor, by this false display of popularity, abases the great without exalting the humble. All men are equal before God, and the Russians’ God is the emperor. This supreme governor is so raised above earth, that he sees no difference between the serf and the lord. From the height in which his sublimity dwells, the little distinctions that divide mankind escape his divine inspection, just as the irregularities which appear on the surface of the globe vanish before an inhabitant of the sun.
When the emperor opens his palace to the privileged peasants and the chosen merchants whom he admits twice a year to the honor of paying their court,[1] he does not say to the laborer or the tradesman, “You are a man like myself,” but he says to the great lord, “You are a slave like them, and I, your God, soar equally above you all.” Such is, all political fiction aside, the moral meaning of the fête; and it is this which, in my opinion, spoils it. As a spectator, I remarked that it pleased the sovereign and the serfs, much more than the professed courtiers.
To seek to become a popular idol by reducing all classes to a level, is a cruel game, an amusement of despotism, which might dazzle the men of an earlier century, but which cannot deceive any people arrived at the age of experience and reflection.
The Emperor Nicholas did not devise this imposition; and such being the case, it would be the more worthy of him to abolish it. Yet it must be owned, that nothing is abolished in Russia without peril. The people who want the guarantees of law, are protected only by those of custom. An obstinate attachment to usages, which are upheld by insurrection and poison, is one of the bases of the constitution, and the periodical death of sovereigns proves to the Russians that this constitution knows how to make itself respected. The adjustment of such a machine is to me a deep and painful mystery.
In point of magnificent decorations, and picturesque assemblage of the costumes of all ranks, the fête at Peterhof cannot be too highly extolled. Nothing that I had read, or that had been related to me concerning it, gave me any adequate idea of the fairy scene; the imagination was surpassed by the reality.
The reader must picture to himself a palace built upon a terrace, the height of which seems that of a mountain, in a land of plains extending farther than the eye can reach: a country so flat, that, from an elevation of sixty feet, the vision may sweep over an immense horizon. At the foot of this imposing structure lies a vast park, which terminates only with the sea, on whose bosom may be perceived a line of vessels of war, which were illuminated on the evening of the fête. This illumination was general; the fire blazed and extended, like a conflagration, from the groves and terraces of the palace to the waves of the Gulf of Finland. In the park, the lamps produced the effect of daylight. The trees were lighted up by suns of every color. It was not by thousands, nor tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands, that the lights in these gardens of Armida might be counted; and they could all be seen from the windows of a palace crowded with a people as profoundly respectful as if they had lived all their days at court.
Nevertheless, in this assemblage, the object of which was to efface all distinctions of rank, each class might still be separately traced. Whatever attacks despotism may have made upon the aristocracy, there are yet castes in Russia. Here is presented one more point of resemblance to the East, and not one of the least striking contradictions of social order created by the manners of the people combined with the government of the country. Thus, at this fête of the empress, this true bacchanalian revel of absolute power, I recognized the order which reigns throughout the state, amid the apparent disorder of the ball. Those whom I met were always either merchants, soldiers, laborers, or courtiers, and each class was distinguished by its costume. A dress which would not denote the rank of the man, and a man whose only worth should arise from his personal merit, would be considered as anomalies, as European inventions, imported by restless innovators and imprudent travelers. It must never be forgotten that we are here on the confines of Asia: a Russian in a frock coat, in his own country, appears to me like a foreigner.
Russia is placed upon the limits of two continents. It is not in the nature of that which is European to amalgamate perfectly with that which is Asiatic. The Muscovite community has been governed hitherto only by submitting to the violence and incoherence attendant upon the contact of two civilizations, entirely different in character. This presents to the traveler a field of interesting, if not comforting speculation.
The ball was a rout: it professed to be a masquerade, for the men wore small pieces of silk, called Venetian mantles, which floated in a ridiculous manner above their uniforms. The halls of the old palace, filled with people, resembled an ocean of heads of greasy hair, over all of which rose proudly the noble head of the emperor, whose stature, voice, and will, alike soar above his people. This prince seems worthy and capable of subjugating the minds of men, even as he surpasses their persons. A sort of mysterious influence attaches to his presence: at Peterhof, on the parade, in war, and in every moment of his life, may be seen in him the power that reigns.
This perpetual reigning, and its perpetual worship, would be a real comedy, if upon such permanent dramatic representation there did not depend the existence of sixty millions of men, who live only because the man whom you see before you, playing the part of the emperor, gives them permission to breathe, and dictates to them the mode of using that permission. It is the divine right, applied to the mechanism of social life. Such is the serious side of the representation, wherein are involved incidents of so grave a nature, that fear soon extinguishes the inclination to laughter.
There does not exist on the earth at the present time, not in Turkey, not even in China, a single man who enjoys and exercises such power as the emperor. Let the reader figure to himself all the skillfulness and experience of our modern governments, perfected as they are by centuries of practice, put into exercise in a still young and uncivilized society; the rubrics of the administrations of the West, aiding the despotism of the East; European discipline supporting the tyranny of Asia; the police employed in concealing barbarism, in order, not to destroy, but to perpetuate it; disciplined brute force and the tactics of European armies, serving to strengthen an Eastern policy;—let him conceive the idea of a half-savage people, who have been enrolled and drilled, without having been civilized, and he will be able to understand the social and moral state of the Russian nation. To profit by the progressive discoveries in the art of governing made by the European nations, in order to rule sixty millions of Orientals, has been from the time of Peter the First the problem to be studied by those who govern Russia.
The reigns of Catherine the Great and of Alexander did but prolong the systematic infancy of this nation.
Catherine had instituted schools to please the French philosophers, whose praises her vanity desired to obtain. The governor of Moscow, one of her old favorites, who was rewarded by a pompous exile in the ancient capital of the empire, wrote to her one day that no one would send their children to the schools. The empress replied pretty nearly in these words:—
“My dear prince, do not distress yourself because the Russians have no desire for knowledge: if I institute schools, it is not for ourselves, but for Europe, in whose esteem we must maintain our standing; but if our peasants should really seek to become enlightened, neither you nor I could continue in our places.”
This letter has been read by a person in whose statements I have every confidence. Undoubtedly, in writing it, the empress forgot herself; and it is precisely because she was subject to such absence of mind that she was considered so amiable, and that she exercised so much power over the minds of imaginative men.
The Russians will, according to their usual tactics, deny the authenticity of the anecdote; but if I cannot be certain as to the strict accuracy of the words, I can affirm that they truly express the sentiments of the sovereign. In this trait may be discovered the spirit of vanity which rules and torments the Russians, and which perverts, even in its source, the power established over them.
Their unfortunate desire for the good opinion of Europe is a phantom which pursues them in the secrecy of thought, and reduces civilization to a trick of jugglery, executed more or less adroitly.
The present emperor, aided by his sound judgment and his clear apprehension, has perceived the shoal, but will he be able to avoid it? More than the strength of Peter the Great is required to remedy the evil caused by that first corrupter of the Russians.
At the present time the difficulty is of a double character; the mind of the peasant remains rude and barbarous, while his habits and his disposition cause him to submit to restraint. At the same time, the false refinement of the nobles contravenes the national character, upon which all attempts to ennoble the people can alone be built. What a complication! Who will unloose this modern gordian knot?
The mischief is so deeply rooted, that it strikes even the eye of strangers the least attentive, and that too in a country where everyone conspires to deceive the traveler.
In traveling in Russia, a light and superficial mind may feed itself on illusions; but whoever has his eyes open, and adds to some little power of observation an independent humor, will be presented with a continued and painful labor, which consists in discovering and discerning, at every point, the struggle between two nations carried on in one community. These two nations are,—Russia as she is, and Russia as they would have her to appear in the eyes of Europe.
The emperor is less secure than anyone against the snares of illusion. The reader will remember the journey of Catherine to Cherson: she traversed deserts, but they built her lines of villages at every half league of the road by which she passed, and as she did not go behind the scenes of this theater on which the tyrant played the fool, she believed her southern provinces were well peopled, though they continued cursed with a sterility which was owing to the oppression of her government rather than to the rigor of nature. The finesse of the men charged by the emperor with the details of Russian administration, still exposes the sovereign to similar deceptions.
The diplomatic corps, and the Western people in general, have always been considered by this Byzantine government and by Russia in general, as malignant and jealous spies. There is this similarity between the Russians and the Chinese, that both one and the other always believe that strangers envy them: they judge us by their own sentiments.
The Russian hospitality also, vaunted as it is, has become an art which may be resolved into a refined species of policy. It consists in rendering its guest content at the least possible cost of sincerity. Here, politeness is only the art of reciprocally disguising the double fear that each experiences and inspires. I hear everywhere spoken the language of philosophy, and everywhere I see that oppression is the order of the day. They say to me,—“We would gladly dispense with being arbitrary, we should then be more rich and prosperous; but we have to do with an Asiatic people”: at the same time, they think in their hearts, “We would gladly dispense with talking liberalism and philanthropy, we should then be more happy and more strong; but we have to do with the governments of Europe.”
The Russians of all classes conspire, with an unanimity which is extraordinary, in causing duplicity to triumph among themselves. They have a dexterity in lying, a natural proneness to deceit, which is revolting. Things that I admire elsewhere, I hate here, because I find them too dearly paid for; order, patience, calmness, elegance, respectfulness, the natural and moral relations which ought to exist between those who think and those who execute, in short, all that gives a worth and a charm to well-organized societies, all that gives a meaning and an object to political institutions, is lost and confounded here in one single sentiment—that of fear. In Russia, fear replaces, that is, paralyzes thought. This sentiment, when it reigns alone, can never produce more than the appearances of civilization; whatever shortsighted legislators may say, fear will never be the moving influence of a well-organized society; it is not order, it is the veil of chaos; where liberty is wanting, there soul and truth must be wanting also. Russia is a body without life, a colossus which subsists only by its head; and of which the members, all equally deprived of force, languish! Thence arises a profound inquietude, an inexpressible uneasiness, an uneasiness which does not, like that of the new French révolutionnaires, arise from a vagueness of ideas, from abuses, from the satiety of material prosperity, or the jealousies which a combination of agencies gives birth to; it is the expression of a real state of suffering, the indication of an organic malady.
I believe that in no part of the world do the men enjoy less real happiness than in Russia. We are not happy among ourselves, but we feel that happiness is in our power: among the Russians it is unattainable. Imagine republican passions (for, once again, fictitious equality reigns under a Russian emperor) boiling beneath the silence of despotism! This is a terrifying combination, especially as viewed with regard to its future influence upon the world. Russia is a cauldron of boiling water, well closed, but placed over a fire which is ever becoming more fiercely heated; I dread the explosion, and the emperor has several times experienced the same dread during the course of his laborious reign; laborious in peace as in war, for, in our days, empires, like machines, are ruined by remaining inactive. Prudence paralyzes them; anxiety in idleness devours them.
It is, then, this head without a body, this sovereign without a nation, who gives popular fêtes! It appears to me that before creating popularity, he should create a people.
In truth the country lends itself marvelously to every species of fraud: there are slaves elsewhere, but to find a nation of courtly slaves it is necessary to visit Russia. One scarcely knows at which most to wonder, the inconsistency or the hypocrisy. Catherine II is not dead; for notwithstanding the open character of her grandson, it is still by dissimulation that Russia is governed. Here, to avow the tyranny would be to make a beneficial progress.
On this point, as on many others, the foreigners who have described Russia have combined with the natives to deceive the world. Could any persons be more treacherously complaisant than the greater part of those writers who congregate here from all the corners of Europe, in order to excite a sensibility on the touching familiarity which reigns between the Russian emperor and his people? Are, then, the illusions of despotism so strong as to overpower even the simple spectator? Either this country has not hitherto been described except by men whose position or character does not permit of their being independent, or else minds the most sincere lose their ability of judgment as soon as they enter Russia.
As regards myself, I oppose this influence the aversion which I have for disguise.
I hate but one evil, and if I hate it, it is because I believe that it engenders and includes all the others: this evil is falsehood. I therefore endeavor to unmask it wherever I meet with it; it is the horror which it inspires me that gives me the desire and the courage to write these travels: I undertook them through curiosity, I relate them from a sense of duty. A passion for truth is an inspiration which supplies the place of energy, youth, and enlightened views. This sentiment influences me to such an extent as to cause me to love even the age in which we live: for though it be somewhat course, it is, at least, more sincere than that which preceded it. It distinguishes itself by the repugnance, sometimes rude and unmannerly, which it evinces for all affectations. In this repugnance I partake. A hatred for hypocrisy is the torch which serves to guide me through the labyrinth of the world: those who deceive men, whatever means they may use, seem to me as poisoners; and the more elevated and powerful they are, the more they are culpable.
Such are the sentiments which prevented my enjoying, yesterday, a spectacle which, notwithstanding, my eyes admired. It was beautiful, magnificent, singular, novel—but it appeared deceptive: this idea sufficed to deprive it of all real splendor. The passion for truth, which in the present day pervades the hearts of Frenchmen, is still unknown in Russia
After all, what is this crowd, whose respectful familiarity in presence of its sovereign has been so much extolled in Europe? Do not deceive yourselves: these are the slaves of slaves. The great lords send to the fête of the empress chosen peasants, who, it is pretended, arrive by chance. This elite of the serfs is joined by the most respectable and best-known tradespeople, for it is necessary to have a few men with beards to satisfy the old-fashioned Russians. Such is, in reality, the people whose excellent disposition has been held up as an example to other people by the sovereigns of Russia, from the time of the Empress Elizabeth. It is, I believe, from her reign that this kind of fête dates. At present, the Emperor Nicholas, notwithstanding his iron character, his admirable rectitude of intention, and the authority with which his public and private virtues invest him, could not perhaps abolish the usage. It is therefore true that, even under governments the most absolute in appearance, circumstances are stronger than men.
Nothing is so perilous for a man, however elevated his position may be, than to say to a nation, “You have been deceived, and I will be no longer accessory to your error.” The vulgar cling to falsehood, even when it injures them, rather than to truth, because human pride prefers that which comes from man to that which comes from God. This is true under all governments, but doubly so under despotism.
An independence like that of the muzhiks of Peterhof can alarm nobody. It forms the liberty and equality which despots love. It may be boasted of without risk; but advise Russia to a gradual emancipation, and you will soon see what is said of you in the country!
I, yesterday, heard the courtiers, as they passed near me, boasting of the politeness of their serfs: “Who ever saw such a fête in France?” they said. I was strongly tempted to answer them: “In order to compare our two people, we must wait until yours exists.”
I called to mind at the same time a fête which I once gave to the lower orders at Seville. It was under the despotism of Ferdinand VII, but the true politeness of those Spaniards, free de facto, if not de jure, furnished me with an object of comparison little favorable to the Russians.
Russia is a book, the table of whose contents is magnificent, but beware of going further. If you turn over the leaves, you will find no performance answering to the promise: all the chapters are headed, but all have to be filled up. How many of the Russian forests are only marshes, where you will never cut a faggot! How many distant regiments are there without men, and cities and roads which exist only in idea! The nation itself is as yet nothing more than a puff placarded upon Europe, dupe of a diplomatic fiction. I have found here no real life except that of the emperor; no constitution except that of the court.
The tradespeople who ought to form a middle class are too few in number to possess any influence in the state; besides, they are almost all foreigners. The authors amount to one or two in each generation: the artists are like the authors, their scarcity causes them to be esteemed; but though this favors their personal prospects, it is injurious to their social influence. There are no lawyers in a country where there is no justice: where, then, is to be found that middle class which constitutes the strength of other states, and without which the people are only a flock, guided by a few well-trained watchdogs? I have not mentioned another class of men who are not to be reckoned either among the great or the little. These are the sons of the priests, who almost all become subaltern employees—the commissioners and deputies who are the plagues of Russia. They form a species of obscure noblesse, very hostile to the great nobles; a noblesse whose spirit is anti-aristocratic in the true political signification of the word, and who at the same time are very burdensome to the serfs. These are the men inconvenient to the state, and fruits of the schism which permits the priest to marry who will commence the approaching revolution of Russia.
The punishment of death does not exist in this land, except for the crime of high treason; but there are certain criminals whom they nevertheless kill. The way in which they reconcile the mildness of the code with the traditional ferocity of manners, is this: when a criminal is condemned to more than a hundred strokes of the knout, the executioner, who understands the meaning of such a sentence, kills him through humanity, by striking him at the third blow on a mortal part. And yet the punishment of death is abolished! To making the law thus lie, the proclamation of the most audacious tyranny would be preferable.
Should it be thought that I judge Russia too severely, I must plead the involuntary impression that I receive each day from persons and from things, and which every friend of humanity would receive in my place, if, like me, he endeavored to look beyond the surface that would be exhibited to him.
This empire, immense as it is, is no more than a prison, of which the emperor keeps the key. Nothing can exceed the misery of the subjects unless it be that of the prince. The life of the jailer has always appeared to me so similar to that of the prisoner, that I am astonished at the mental illusion which makes the one believe himself so much less to be pitied than the other.
Man, here, knows neither the real social enjoyments of cultivated minds, nor the absolute and animal liberty of the savage, nor yet the independence of action of the half savage —the barbarian; I can see no compensation for the misery of being born under this system, except the dreams of vanity and the love of command; on these passions I stumble every time I return to the endeavor of analyzing the moral life of the inhabitants of Russia. Russia thinks and lives as a soldier! A soldier, to whatever country he may belong, is scarcely a citizen; and here less than anywhere can he be called one; he is rather a prisoner for life, condemned to look after other prisoners.
It should be observed that the word prison signifies something more here than it does elsewhere. When one thinks on all the subterranean cruelties concealed from our pity by the discipline of silence, in a land where every man serves an apprenticeship to discretion, it makes one tremble. He who would cherish a hatred for reserve should come here. Every little check in conversation, every change of expression, every inflection of voice, teaches me the danger of confidence and candor.
The very appearance of the houses brings to my mind the unhappy condition of human existence in this land.
If I cross the threshold of the palace of some great nobleman, and see there a disgusting and ill-disguised uncleanliness reigning amidst an ostentatious display of luxury; if I, so to speak, inhale vermin, even under the roof of opulence,— my mind will not stop at that which is presented merely by the senses; it wanders further, and sees all the filth and corruption which must poison the dungeons of a country where even the rich do not shrink from loathsome contact. When I suffer from the dampness of my chamber, I think of the unfortunate beings exposed to that of the underwater prison of Kronstadt, the fortress of Petersburg, and of many other political tombs of which I do not even know the name. The ghastly visages of the soldiers whom I meet in the streets remind me of the dishonesty of those employed in provisioning the army. The fraud of these traitors, paid by the emperor to feed his guards, is written in lines of lead on the livid faces of the unfortunate wretches, deprived of wholesome and even sufficient nutriment by men who care only to enrich themselves as rapidly as possible, unmindful of the disgrace they are bringing on their government, and of the maledictions of the regiments of slaves whom they kill. Finally, at each step I here take, I see rising before me the phantom of Siberia, and I think of all that is implied in the name of that political desert, that abyss of misery, that grave of living men,—a land peopled with infamous criminals and sublime heroes, a colony without which this empire would be as incomplete as a palace without cellars.
A traveler who would allow himself to be indoctrinated by the people of the country, might overrun the empire from one end to the other, and return home without having surveyed anything but a series of façades. This is what he should do in order to please his entertainers. I am aware that such is the case, but so high a price for their hospitality I cannot afford to pay.
Provided a stranger shows himself ridiculously active, rises early after having retired to rest late, never fails to attend every ball and review, in short, provided he keeps too constantly in motion to be able to think, he is well received everywhere, well thought of, and well fêted; a crowd of strangers press his hand every time that the emperor may have spoken to him, smiles are lavishly bestowed, and, on leaving, he is pronounced a distinguished traveler. He reminds me of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme played upon by the Mufti of Molière. The Russians have coined a French word that admirably designates their political hospitality; in speaking of foreigners whom they blind by means of fêtes—“we must garland them,”[2] they say. But let the stranger be on his guard lest he should for a moment betray any relaxation of zeal; at the least symptom of fatigue, or of penetration, he will see the Russian spirit, the most caustic of all spirits, rising up against him like an enraged serpent.
Ridicule, that empty consolation of the oppressed, is here the pleasure of the peasant, as sarcasm is the accomplishment of the noble; irony and imitation are the only natural talents which I have discovered among the Russians. The stranger once exposed to the venom of their criticism would never recover from it; he would be passed from mouth to mouth like a deserter running the gauntlet, and finally be trampled under the feet of a crowd the most hardened and ambitious in the world. The ambitious have always a pleasure in ruining others: “Destroy him as a precaution, there will at any rate be one the less; every man must be viewed as a rival because it is possible that he may become one.”
I have no greater belief in the probity of the muzhik. They tell me that he would not pluck a flower in the garden of his emperor; that I do not dispute. I know that fear will produce miracles, but I know also that this model people, these peasant courtiers, do not scruple to rob their lordly rivals on a day when, too much affected by their presence at the palace, and too confident in the honorable sentiments of the serf ennobled for the hour, they cease for one moment to watch the movements of the said serf’s hands.
Yesterday, at the Imperial and popular ball of the palace of Peterhof, the Sardinian ambassador had his watch very adroitly extracted, notwithstanding the chain which formed its guard. Several people missed also their handkerchiefs and other articles in the press. I myself lost a purse lined with a few ducats, and consoled myself for the loss in laughing at the eulogies lavished on the probity of this people by its lords. The latter well know the real value of all their fine phrases, and I am not sorry to know it also. In observing their futile finesses, I seek for the dupes of falsehoods so puerile, and I cry, with Basil, “Who is deceiving here? All the world is in the secret.”
In vain do the Russians talk and pretend; every honest observer can only see in them the Greeks of the Lower Empire, formed, in accordance with the rules of modern strategy, by the Prussians of the eighteenth and the French of the nineteenth century.
The popularity of an autocrat appears to me as suspicious in Russia, as does the honesty of the men who in France preach absolute democracy in the name of liberty,—both are murderous sophisms. To destroy liberty while preaching liberality is assassination, for society lives by truth; to make tyranny patriarchal is assassination also.
I have one fixed political principle; it is that men can and ought to be governed without being deceived. If in private life falsehood is degrading, in public life it is criminal; every government that lies, is a conspirator more dangerous than the traitor whom it legally condemns to capital punishment; and—notwithstanding the example of certain great minds spoilt by an age of sophists—where truth is renounced, genius forsakes its seat, and, by a strange reversion of things, the master humbles himself before the slave; for the man who deceives is below the victim of deception. This is as applicable to politics and to literature as to religion.
The emperor has made himself the champion of monarchical power in Europe, and, it is well known, he boldly and openly maintains this position. He is not seen, as is a certain government, preaching in each different locality a different policy, according to varying and purely commercial local interests: on the contrary, he favors everywhere indiscriminately the principles which accord with his system. Is it thus that England is liberal, constitutional, and philanthropic?
The emperor reads daily, from one end to the other, one French newspaper, and only one, the Journal des Débats. He never looks at the others, unless some interesting article is pointed out to him.
To sustain power in order to preserve social order, is, in France, the object of the best and worthiest minds; it is also the constant aim of the Journal des Débats, an aim prosecuted with an intellectual superiority which explains the consideration accorded to this paper in our own country, as well as in the rest of Europe.
France is suffering under the disease common to the age, she is suffering under it more than any other land; this disease is hatred of authority; the remedy, therefore, consists in fortifying authority: such is the sentiment of the emperor at Petersburg, and of the Journal des Débats at Paris.
But, as they agree only in regard to the end to be obtained, they are so much the more opposed as they seem to be united. The choice of means will often cause dissension among those gathered under the same banner: they meet as allies, they separate as enemies.
The legitimacy of hereditary right appears to the emperor of Russia the only means of attaining his end; and in forcing a little the ordinary sense of the old word “legitimacy,” under pretext that there exists another more sure,—that, namely, of election based upon the true interests of the country,—the Journal des Débats raises altar against altar, in the name of the salvation of society.
From the contest of these two legitimacies, one of which is blind as fate, the other wavering as passion, results an anger the more lively because the advocates of both systems lack decisive reasons, and use the same terms to arrive at opposite conclusions.
The site of Peterhof is the most beautiful that I have hitherto seen in Russia. A ridge of small elevation commands the sea, which borders the extremity of the park at about a third of a league from the palace; the latter is built on the edge of this mount, which is almost perpendicular. Magnificent flights of steps have been formed, by which you descend from terrace to terrace into the park, where are found groves of great extent and beauty, jets d’eau, and artificial cascades in the taste of those at Versailles, and structures raised on certain elevated points, from whence may be seen the shores of Finland, the arsenal of the Russian navy, the isle of Kronstadt, and, at about nine leagues towards the right, St. Petersburg, the white city, which at a distance looks bright and lively, and, with its pointed-roofed palaces, its temples of plastered columns, its forests of steeples that resemble minarets, has the appearance towards evening of a wood of fir trees, whose silver tops are illuminated by the ruddy glare of some great fire.
When I think of all the obstacles which men have here conquered in order to exist as a community, to build a city, and to maintain in it all the magnificence necessary to the vanity of great princes and great folks, I cannot see a lettuce or a rose without being tempted to exclaim—“A miracle!” If Petersburg is a Lapland in stucco, Peterhof is the palace of Armida under glass. I can scarcely believe in the real existence of so many costly, delicate, and brilliant objects, when I recollect that a few degrees farther north, the year is divided into a day, a night, and two twilights, of three months each.
One may ride a league in the Imperial park of Peterhof without passing twice under the same avenue: imagine, then, such a park all on fire. In this icy and gloomy land the illuminations are perfect conflagrations; it might be said that the night was to make amends for the day. The trees disappear under a decoration of diamonds, in each alley there are as many lamps as leaves; it is Asia, not the real modern Asia, but the fabulous Baghdad of the Arabian Nights, or the more fabulous Babylon of Semiramis.
It is said that on the empress’s birthday, six thousand carriages, thirty thousand pedestrians, and an innumerable quantity of boats leave Petersburg to proceed to, and form encampments around, Peterhof.
It is the only day on which I have seen a real crowd in Russia. A bivouac of civilians in a country altogether military, is a rarity. Not that the army was wanting at the fête, for a body of guards and the corps of cadets were both cantoned round the residence of the sovereign. All the multitude of officers, soldiers, tradesmen, serfs, lords, and masters, wandered together among the woods, where night was chased away by two hundred and fifty thousand lamps. Such was the number named to me; and though I do not know whether it was correct or not, I do know that the mass of fire shed an artificial light far exceeding in clearness that of the northern day. In Russia, the emperor casts the sun into the shade. At this period of the summer, the nights recommence and rapidly increase in length; so that, without the illumination, it would have been dark for several hours under the avenues in the park of Peterhof.
It is said, also, that in thirty-five minutes all the lamps of the illuminations in the park were lighted by eighteen hundred men. Opposite the front of the palace, and proceeding from it in a straight line towards the sea, is a canal, the surface of whose waters was so covered with the reflection of the lights upon its borders, as to produce a perspective that was magical; it might have been taken for a sheet of fire. Arioston would perhaps have had imagination brilliant enough to describe all the wonders of this illumination: to the various groups of lamps, which were disposed with much taste and fancy, were given numerous original forms; flowers as large as trees, suns, vases, bowers of vine leaves, obelisks, pillars, walls chased with arabesque work; in short, a world of fantastic imagery passed before the eye, and one gorgeous device succeeded another with inexpressible rapidity.
At the extremity of the canal, on an enormous pyramid of fire (it was, I believe, seventy feet high), stood the initials of the Empress, shining in brilliant white above all the red, blue, and green lights which surrounded it. It was like an aigrette of diamonds circled with gems of all hues. Everything was on so large a scale that the mind doubted the reality which the eye beheld. Such efforts for an annual festival appeared incredible. There was something as extraordinary in the episodes to which it gave rise, as in the fête itself. During two or three nights, all the crowd of which I have spoken encamped around the village. Many women slept in their carriages, and the female peasants in their carts. These conveyances, crowded together by hundreds, formed camps which were very amusing to survey, and which presented scenes worthy of the pencil of an artist.
The Russian has a genius for the picturesque; and the cities of a day which he raises for his festive occasions, are more amusing, and have a much more national character than the real cities built in Russia by foreigners. The painful impression I have received since living among the Russians, increases as I discover the true value of this oppressed people. The idea of what they could do if they were free, heightens the anger which I feel in seeing them as they now are.
The ambassadors with their families and suites, as well as the strangers who have been presented, are boarded and lodged at the expense of the emperor. For this object, a large and charming edifice, called the English Palace, is reserved. The building is a quarter of a league from the Imperial Palace, in a beautiful park, laid out in the English taste, and so picturesque that it appears natural. The beauty of the waters, and the undulations of the surface—undulations rarely seen in the environs of Petersburg—make it very pleasant. This year, the number of foreigners being greater than usual, there is not room for them in the English Palace. I do not therefore sleep there, but I dine there daily with the diplomatic corps and seven or eight hundred other individuals, at a perfectly well-served table. This is certainly magnificent hospitality. When lodging at the village, it is necessary, after dressing in uniform, to proceed in a carriage, in order to dine at this table, at which presides one of the great officers of the empire.
For the night, the director general of the theaters of the court has placed at my disposal two actors’ boxes in the theater of Peterhof, and this lodging is the envy of everyone.[3] It lacks nothing except a bed; and fortunately I brought my little iron couch from Petersburg. It is an indispensable necessary for an European, traveling in Russia, who does not wish to pass the night rolled in a rug on a bench or a staircase. We carry our beds here as we would our cloaks in Spain. For want of straw, which is a rare thing in a region that grows no wheat, my mattress is filled with hay.
In any other country, so great an assemblage of people would produce overwhelming noise and disturbance. In Russia, everything passes with gravity, everything takes the character of a ceremony; to see so many young persons united together for their pleasure, or for that of others, not daring either to laugh, to sing, to quarrel, to play, or to dance, one might imagine them a troop of prisoners about to proceed to their destination. What is wanted in all I see here is not, assuredly, grandeur or magnificence, nor even taste and elegance: it is gaiety. Gaiety cannot be compelled; on the contrary, compulsion makes it fly, just as the line and the level destroy the picturesque in scenery. I see only in Russia that which is symmetrically correct, which carries with it an air of command and regulation; but that which would give a value to this order, variety, from whence springs harmony, is here unknown.
The soldiers at their bivouac are subjected to a more severe discipline than in their barracks. Such rigor, in time of peace, in the open field, and on a day of festival, reminds me of the remark of the Grand Duke Constantine. “I do not like war,” he said: “it spoils the soldiers, dirties their uniforms, and destroys discipline.”
The prince did not give all his reasons for disliking war, as is proved by his conduct in Poland.
On the day of the ball and the illumination, we repaired to the Imperial Palace at seven o’clock. The courtiers, the ambassadors, the invited foreigners, and the soi-disant populace, entered the state apartments without any prescribed order. All the men, except the muzhiks, who wore their national costume, and the merchants who were robed in the caftan, carried the tabarro, or Venetian mantle above their uniform, which was a strictly enforced regulation, the fête being called a masked ball.
We remained a considerable time, much pressed by the crowd, waiting for the appearance of the emperor and his family. As soon as this sun of the palace began to rise, the space opened before him, and followed by his splendid cortege, he proceeded, without being even incommoded by the crowd, through the halls into which, the moment before, you might have supposed another person could not have penetrated. Wherever His Majesty passed, the waves of peasants rolled back, closing instantly behind him like waters in a vessel’s track.
The noble aspect of the monarch, whose head rose above all heads, awed this agitated sea into respect. It reminded me of the Neptune of Virgil;—he could not be more an emperor than he is. He danced, during two or three successive hours, polonaises with the ladies of his family and court.
The emperor and his cortege wound, in a surprising manner, through the crowd, which, without foreseeing the direction he was about to take, always gave way in time, so as never to incommode the progress of the monarch.
He spoke to several of the men robed and bearded à la russe: at length, towards ten o’clock, at which hour it became dark, the illuminations, of which I have already spoken, commenced.
We had expected, during a great part of the day, that, owing to the weather, they would not have taken place. About three o’clock, while at dinner in the English Palace, a squall of wind passed over Peterhof, violently agitated the trees, and strewed the park with their branches. While coolly watching the storm, we little thought that the sisters, mothers, and friends of crowds seated at the same table with us were perishing on the water, under its terrible strength. Our thoughtless curiosity was approaching to gaiety at the very moment that a great number of small vessels, which had left Petersburg for Peterhof, were foundering in the gulf. It is now admitted that two hundred persons were drowned: others say fifteen hundred or two thousand: no one knows the truth, and the journals will not speak of the occurrence: this would be to distress the empress, and to accuse the emperor.
The disaster was kept a secret during the entire evening, nothing transpired until after the fête; and this morning the court neither appeared more nor less sad than usual. There, etiquette forbids to speak of that which occupies the thoughts of all; and even beyond the palace, little is said. The life of man in this country is such as to be deemed of trifling importance even by himself. Each one feels his existence to hang upon a thread.
Every year, accidents, similar, although less extensive, cast a gloom over the fête of Peterhof, which would change into an act of deep mourning, a solemn funeral, if others, like me, thought upon all that this magnificence costs. But here, I am the only one that reflects. Yesterday, superstitious minds were presented with more than one gloomy prognostic. The weather, which had been fine for three weeks, changed upon the birthday of the empress. The initials of that princess would not light up. The man charged with superintending this essential part of the illumination ascended to the summit of the pyramid, but the wind extinguished his lamps as quickly as he lighted them. He reascended several times; at length his foot slipped, and he fell from a height of seventy feet, and was killed on the spot.
The shocking thinness of the empress, her air of languor, the diminished luster of her eye, rendered these presages the more ominous. Her life, like a disease, may be said to be fatal: fêtes and balls every evening! There is no choice here but that of dying of amusement, or of ennui.
For the empress, as well as the zealous courtiers, the spectacle of parades and reviews commences early in the morning. These are always followed by some receptions; the empress then retires for a quarter of an hour, after which she rides out in her carriage for two hours. She next takes a bath before again going out on horseback. Returned a second time, she has some more visitors to receive: this over, she proceeds to inspect certain useful institutions superintended by herself, or by some of those honored with her intimacy. From thence she follows the emperor to the camp: there being always one somewhere near. They return to dance; and thus her days, her years, and her life are consumed.
Those who have not the courage or the strength necessary to pursue this dreadful life, are not in favor.
The empress said to me the other day, in speaking of a very distinguished but delicate woman, “She is always ill!” The tone and manner in which this was spoken convinced me that the fate of a family was decided. In a sphere where good intentions are not sufficient, an indisposition is equivalent to a disgrace.
The empress does not consider herself more excused than others from doing her share. She cannot for a moment bear that the emperor should leave her. Princes are made of iron! This high-minded woman wishes, and at moments believes, herself to be free from human infirmities; but the total privation of physical and mental repose, the want of a continuous occupation, the absence of all serious conversation, the acquired necessity of excitement, all tend to nurse a fever which is sapping life. And this dreadful mode of existence has become as indispensable as it is fatal. She cannot now either abandon it or sustain it. Consumption is feared, and, above all, the winter of Petersburg is dreaded; but nothing can induce her to pass six months away from the emperor.
While observing her interesting though emaciated figure wandering like a specter through a scene of festivity celebrated in her honor, and which she will perhaps never witness again, my heart sunk within me, and, dazzled as I may have been with human pomp and grandeur, I turned to reflect on the miseries to which our nature is exposed. Alas! the loftier the height from which we fall, the severer is the shock. The great expiate in one day, even in this world, all the privations that the poor suffer during a long life.
Yesterday, at the close of the ball, we supped; after which, almost melted, for the heat of the apartments in which the crowd was gathered was unbearable, we entered certain carriages belonging to the court, called lignes, and made the tour of the illuminations; beyond the influence of which the night was very dark and cool. The incredible profusion of lights spread over the enchanted forest, produced however within its shades an extraordinary heat, and we were warmed as well as dazzled.
The lignes are a species of carriage with double seats, on which eight persons can conveniently sit, back to back. Their shape, gilding, and the antique trappings of the horses impart to them an air of grandeur and originality.
Objects of luxury impressed with a really royal character are now rarely seen in Europe.
The number of these equipages is considerable. They form one of the magnificent displays of the fête of Peterhof. There was room in them for all invited, except the serfs and tradesmen.
A master of the ceremonies had pointed out to me the ligne in which I was to ride, but in the disorder of the departure no one kept his place. I could neither find my servant nor my cloak, and, at length, was obliged to mount one of the last of the lignes, where I seated myself by the side of a Russian lady who had not been to the ball, but who had come from Petersburg to show the illumination to her daughters. The conversation of these ladies, who appeared to know all the families of the court, was frank, in which respect it differed from that of those connected with the palace. The mother immediately commenced conversing with me: her manners had that facility and good taste about them which discovered the woman of rank. I recognized in her conversation, as I had already done elsewhere, that when the Russian women are natural, mildness and indulgence towards others is not a prominent trait in their character. She named to me all the persons we saw passing us; for in this procession the train of lignes often divided and filed before each other at the crossings of the alleys.
If I were not afraid of wearying the reader, I should exhaust all the formulae of admiration in repeating that I have never seen anything so extraordinary as this illuminated park traversed in solemn silence by the carriages of the court, in the midst of a crowd as dense as was that of the peasants in the rooms of the palace a few minutes before.
We rode for about an hour among enchanted groves, and made the tour of a lake situated at the extremity of the park, and called the lake of Marly. Versailles and all the magical creations of Louis XIV haunted the imagination of the princes of Europe for more than a hundred years. It was at this lake of Marly that the illuminations appeared to me the most extraordinary. At the extremity of the piece of water,—I was going to say the piece of gold, so luminous and brilliant did it appear,—stands a house which was the residence of Peter the Great, and which was illuminated like the others. The water and the trees added singularly to the effect of the lights. We passed before grottoes, whose radiant interior was seen through a cascade of water falling over the mouth of the brilliant cavern. The Imperial Palace only was not illuminated, but its white walls were rendered brilliant by the immense masses of light reflected upon them from all parts of the park.
This ride was unquestionably the most interesting feature in the fête of the empress. But I again repeat, scenes of magic splendor do not constitute scenes of gaiety. No one laughed, sung, or danced; they all spoke low; they amused themselves with precaution; it seemed as though the Russian subjects were so broken in to politeness as to be respectful even to their pleasure. In short, liberty was wanting at Peterhof, as it is everywhere else in Russia.
I reached my chamber, or rather my box, after midnight. From that time, the retreat of the spectators commenced, and while this torrent swept under my window, I sat down to write, for sleep would have been impossible in the midst of so much uproar. In this country, the horses alone have permission to make a noise. Conveyances of all forms and sizes thundered along amid a crowd of men, women, and children, on foot.
It was natural life recommencing after the constraint of a royal fête. One might have supposed them prisoners delivered from their chains. The people of the road were no longer the disciplined crowd of the park. They rushed onwards in the direction of Petersburg with a violence and a rapidity that recalled to my mind the descriptions of the retreat from Moscow. Several accidents on the road aided the illusion.
Scarcely had I time to undress and throw myself on my bed, when I found it necessary to be again on foot, to witness the review of the corps of cadets, who were to pass before the emperor.
My surprise was great to find the court already at its post; the women in their morning dresses, the men in their coats of office; everybody awaited the emperor at the place of rendezvous. The desire of proving themselves zealous, animated this embroidered crowd, who all showed so much alacrity that it seemed as if the splendor and fatigues of the night had weighed only upon me. I blushed for my indolence, and felt that I was not born to make a good Russian courtier. The chain, though gilded, did not appear to me the less heavy.
I had but just time to make my way through the crowd before the arrival of the empress, and had not yet gained my place, when the emperor started inspecting the ranks of his junior officers, while the empress, so overcome with fatigue the previous evening, waited for him in a calèche in the midst of the square. I felt for her, but the extreme exhaustion under which she had seemed to suffer during the ball had disappeared. My pity, therefore, turned upon myself, and I saw with envy the oldest people of the court lightly bearing the burden which I found so heavy. Ambition here is the condition of life: without its artificial stimulus the people would be always dull and gloomy. The emperor’s own voice directed the maneuvers of the pupils. After several had been perfectly well executed, His Majesty appeared satisfied. He took the hand of one of the youngest of the cadets, led him forth from the ranks to the empress, and then, raising the child in his arms, to the height of his head, that is, above the head of everybody else, he kissed him publicly. What object had the emperor in showing himself so good-natured on this day, before the public? This they either could not or would not tell me.
I asked the people around me who was the happy father of the model cadet, thus caressed by the sovereign: no one satisfied my curiosity. In Russia everything is turned into mystery. After this sentimental parade, the emperor and empress returned to the palace of Peterhof, where they received in the state apartments such as wished to pay their court. Afterwards, at about eleven o’clock, they appeared on one of the balconies of the palace, before which the soldiers of the Circassian guard, mounted on their superb Asiatic horses, went through some interesting exercises. The beauty of this gorgeously clad troop adds to the military luxury of a court which, notwithstanding its efforts and pretensions, is, and for a long time will remain, more Oriental than European. Towards noon, feeling my curiosity exhausted, and not possessing the all-powerful stimulus of that court ambition which here achieves so many miracles to supply my natural forces, I returned to my bed, from whence I have just risen to finish this recital.
I purpose remaining here the rest of the day, in order to let the crowd pass by; and I am also detained at Peterhof by the hope of a pleasure to which I attach some value.
Tomorrow, if I have time, I will relate the success of my machinations.
[1]On the 1st of January, at Petersburg, and at Peterhof on the birthday of the empress.
[2]Il faut les enguirlander.
[3]In the village there is only a small number of dirty houses, in which the rooms are let at the rate of from two to five hundred rubles per night.