THE PREDICTION made to me at Moscow is already accomplished, although I have yet scarcely completed a quarter of my journey. I have reached Yaroslavl in a carriage, not one part of which is undamaged. It is to be mended, but I doubt whether it will carry me through.
Summer has now vanished,[1] not to return until the next year. A cold rain, which they here consider as proper to the season, has driven away the dog days entirely. I am so accustomed to the inconveniences of the heat, to dust, flies, and mosquitoes, that I can scarcely realize the idea of my deliverance from these scourges.
The city of Yaroslavl is an important entrepôt for the interior commerce of Russia. By it, Petersburg communicates with Persia, the Caspian, and all Asia. The Volga, that great national and moving road, flows by the city, which is the central point of the interior navigation of the country—a navigation wisely directed, much boasted of by the subjects of the czar, and one of the principal sources of their prosperity. It is with the Volga that the immense ramifications of canals are connected, that create the wealth of Russia.
The city, like all the other provincial cities in the empire, is vast in extent, and appears empty. The streets are immensely broad, the squares very spacious, and the houses in general stand far apart. The same style of architecture reigns from one end of the country to the other. The following dialogue will show the value the Russians place on their pretended classic edifices.
A man of intelligence said to me, at Moscow, that he had seen nothing in Italy which appeared new to him.
“Do you speak seriously?” I asked.
“Quite seriously,” he replied.
“It seems to me impossible,” I responded, “that anyone could descend for the first time the southern side of the Alps, without the aspect of the land producing a revolution in his mind.”
“In what manner?” said the Russian, with that disdainful tone and air which here too often pass for a proof of civilization.
“What!” I replied, “the novelty of those landscapes adorned by art, those hills and slopes, where palaces, convents, and villages stand surrounded with vines, mulberries, and olives, those long ranges of white pillars, which support festoons of vines, and which carry the wonders of architecture into the recesses of the steepest mountains,—all that magnificent scenery, which gives the idea of a park laid out by Lenôtre for the pleasure of princes, rather than of a land cultivated in order to yield the laborer his daily bread; all those creations of man applied to embellish the creations of God,—is it possible that they did not appear to you as something new?”
“How,” interrupted the impatient Russian,—“how can you expect us inhabitants of Petersburg and Moscow to be astonished, as you are, with Italian architecture? Do you not see models of it at every step you take in even the smallest of our towns and cities?”
This explosion of national vanity silenced me: I was at Moscow; an inclination to laugh was rising within me, but it would have been dangerous to have given way to it. The argument of my adversary was the same as though a person were to refuse to look upon the Apollo Belvedere because he had elsewhere seen plaster-of-Paris casts of it. The influence of the Mongols survives their conquests among the Russians. Was it, then, to imitate them that they drove them out? Detractors make little progress, either in the arts or in general civilization. The Russians observe with malevolence because they lack the perception of perfection: so long as they envy their models they will never equal them. Their empire is immense, but what of that: who would admire the colossus of an ape?
Such were the angry thoughts that rose in my mind, but of which I suppressed the outward expression, although I believe my disdainful opponent read them on my face, for he did not speak to me anymore, unless it was to add, with a nonchalant air, that he had seen olives in the Crimea, and mulberry trees at Kiev.
For my own part, I congratulate myself that I am only come to Russia for a short time; a long stay in this land might rob me not only of the courage, but of the desire, to say the truth, in answer to things that I hear and see. Despotism discourages and casts a spell of indifference even over minds that are the most determined to struggle against its glaring abuses.
Disdain for things that they do not know, appears to me a dominant trait in the character of the Russians. Instead of endeavoring to comprehend, they endeavor to ridicule. If they ever succeed in bringing to full light their real genius, the world will see, not without some surprise, that it is a genius for caricature. Since I have studied the Russian character, and traveled in this last of the states written in the great book of European history, I have discovered that the talent for ridicule possessed by the parvenu, may become the dowry of an entire nation.
The painted and gilded towers, almost as numerous as the houses of Yaroslavl, shine at a distance like those of Moscow, but the city is less picturesque than the old capital of the empire. It is protected on the banks of the Volga by a raised terrace, planted with trees; under it, as under a bridge, the road passes, by which merchandise is carried to and from the river. Notwithstanding its commercial importance, the city is empty, dull, and silent. From the height of the terrace is to be seen the yet more empty, dull, and silent surrounding country, with the immense river its hue a somber iron-gray, its banks falling straight upon the water, and forming, at their top, a level with the leaden-tinted plain, here and there dotted with forests of birch and pine. This soil is, however, as well cultivated as it is capable of becoming; it is boasted of by the Russians as being, with the exception of the Crimea, the richest and most smiling tract in their empire.
Byzantine edifices ought to be the models of the national architecture in Russia. Cities full of structures adapted to their location should animate the banks of the Volga. The interior arrangements of the Russian habitations are rational; their exterior, and the general plan of the towns, are not so. Yaroslavl has its columns and its triumphal arches in imitation of Petersburg, all of which are in the worst taste, and contrast, in the oddest manner, with the style of the churches and steeples. The nearer I approached this city, the more was I struck with the beauty of the population. The villages are rich and well built: I have seen a few stone houses, though too limited in number to vary the monotony of the view.
The Volga is the Loire of Russia; but instead of the gaily smiling hills of Touraine, crowned with the fairest castles of the Middle Ages, we here find only flat unvaried banks, with plains, where the small, gray, mean-looking houses, ranged in lines like tents, sadden rather than animate the landscape; such is the land that the Russians commend to our admiration.
In walking along the borders of the Volga, I had to struggle against the wind of the north, omnipotent in this country throughout the year; for three months of which it sweeps the dust before it, and for the remaining nine, the snow. This evening, in the intervals of the blast, the distant songs of the boatmen upon the river caught my ear. The nasal tones, that so much injure the effect of the national songs of the Russians, were lost in the distance, and I heard only a vague plaintive strain, of which my heart could guess the words. Upon a long float of timber, which they guided skillfully, several men were descending the course of their native Volga. On reaching Yaroslavl, they wished to land; and when I saw them moor their raft, I stopped. They passed close before me, without taking any notice of my foreign appearance; without even speaking to each other. The Russian peasants are taciturn and devoid of curiosity; I can understand why: what they know, disgusts them with all of which they are ignorant.
Melancholy, disguised by irony, is in this land the most ordinary humor of mind; in the salons especially. There, more than elsewhere, it is necessary to dissimulate sadness; hence the sneering sarcastic tone of language, and those efforts in conversation, painful both to the speaker and the listener. The common people drown their sadness in silent intoxication; the lords, in noisy drunkenness. The same vice assumes a different form in the master and the slave. The former has yet another resource against ennui—ambition, that intoxication of the mind. Among all classes, there reigns an innate elegance, a natural refinement, which is neither barbarism nor civilization; not even their affectation can deprive them of this primitive advantage.
They are, however, deficient in a much more essential quality—the faculty of loving. In ordinary affairs, the Russians want kindheartedness; in great affairs, good faith: a graceful egotism, a polite indifference, are the most conspicuous traits in their intercourse with others. This want of heart prevails among all classes, and betrays itself under various forms, according to the rank of the individuals; but the principle is the same in all. The faculty of being easily affected and tenderly attached, so rare among the Russians, is a ruling characteristic of the Germans, who call it Gemüth. We should call it expansive sensibility, or cordiality, if we had any need of defining a feeling which is scarcely more common among us than among the Russians. But the refined and ingenuous French plaisanterie is here replaced by a malignantly prying, hostile, closely observing, caustic, satirical, and envious spirit, which appears to me infinitely more objectionable than our jesting frivolity. Here, the rigor of the climate, the severity of the government, and the habit of espionage, render characters melancholy, and self-love distrustful. Somebody, or something, is always feared; and, what is worse, not without cause. This is not avowed, yet it cannot be concealed from a traveler accustomed to observe and compare different nations.
To a certain point, the want of a charitable disposition in the Russians towards strangers appears to me excusable. Before knowing us, they lavish their attentions upon us with apparent eagerness, because they are hospitable like the Orientals; but they are also easily wearied like the Europeans. In welcoming us with a forwardness which has more ostentation than cordiality, they scrutinize our slightest words, they submit our most insignificant actions to a critical examination; and as such work necessarily furnishes them with much subject for blame, they triumph internally, saying, “These, then, are the people who think themselves so superior to us!”
This kind of study suits their quickly discerning, rather than sensitive nature. Such a disposition neither excludes a certain politeness, nor a species of grace; but it is the very opposite of true amiability. Perhaps, with care and time, one might succeed in inspiring them with some confidence; nevertheless, I doubt whether all my efforts could achieve this; for the Russians are the most unimpressible, and, at the same time, the most impenetrable people in the world.
What have they done to aid the march of human mind? They have not hitherto produced either philosophers, moralists, legislators, or literati whose names belong to history; but, truly, they have never wanted, and never will want, good diplomatists, clever politic heads; and it is the same with their inferior classes, among whom there are no inventive mechanics, but abundance of excellent workmen.
I am leading the reader into a labyrinth of contradictions, that is, I am showing the things of this world as they have appeared to me at the first and at the second view. I must leave to him the task of so reviewing and arranging my remarks as to be able to draw from them a general opinion. My ambition will be satisfied, if a comparing of, and selecting from, this crowded collection of precipitate and carelessly hazarded judgments, will allow any solid, impartial, and ripe conclusions to be drawn. I have not attempted to draw them, because I prefer traveling to composing: an author is not independent, a traveler is. I therefore record my impressions, and leave the reader to complete the book.
The above reflections on the Russian character have been suggested by several visits that I have made in Yaroslavl. I consider this central point as one of the most interesting in my journey.
I will relate tomorrow the result of my visit to the chief personage of the place, the governor, for I have just sent him my letter. I have been told, or rather given to infer, much to his disparagement, in the various houses that I have visited this morning.
I am writing in a wretched inn; there are but two good ones in Russia, and they are kept by foreigners; the English boardinghouse at St. Petersburg, and that of Madame Howard at Moscow, are those to which I refer. In the houses even of independent private people, I cannot seat myself without trembling.
I have seen several public baths, both at Petersburg and Moscow. The people bathe in different ways: some enter chambers heated to a temperature that appears to me unbearable; the penetrating vapor of these stews is absolutely suffocating. In other chambers, naked men, standing upon heated floors, are soaped and washed by others also naked. The people of taste have their own bathtubs, as in other places: but so many individuals resort to the public establishments, the warm humidity there is so favorable to insect life, the clothes laid down in them are nurseries of so many vermin, that the visitor rarely departs without carrying with him some irrefragable proof of the sordid negligence of the lower orders.
Before cleansing their own persons, those who make use of the public baths ought to insist on the cleansing out of these dens where the old Muscovites revel in their dirtiness, and hasten old age by the inordinate use of steam, and by the perspiration it provokes.
It is now ten o’clock in the evening. The governor has sent to inform me that his son and his carriage will presently call for me. I have answered, with many thanks, that having retired for the night, I cannot this evening avail myself of his kindness; but that I shall pass the whole of the morrow at Yaroslavl, and shall then make my acknowledgments in person. I am not sorry to have this opportunity of observing Russian hospitality in the provinces.
This morning, about eleven, the governor’s son, who is a mere child, arrived in full uniform, to take me in a carriage-and-four, with coachman, and faleiter mounted on the off-side horse, an equipage precisely similar to that of the courtiers at Petersburg. This elegant apparition at the door of my inn disappointed me; I saw at once that it was not with old Muscovites, true boyars, that I had to do. I felt that I should be again among European travelers, courtiers of the Emperor Alexander, and lordly cosmopolites.
“My father knows Paris,” said the young man; “he will be delighted to see a Frenchman.”
“At what period was he in France?”
The young Russian was silent; my question appeared to disconcert him, although I had thought it a very simple one: at first I was unable to account for his embarrassment; after discovering its cause, I gave him credit for an exquisite delicacy,—a rare sentiment in every country and at every age.
M. ———, governor of Yaroslavl, had visited France, in the suite of the Emperor Alexander, during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, and this was a reminiscence of which his son was unwilling to remind me. His tact recalled to my memory a very different trait. One day, in a small town of Germany, I dined with the envoy of a petty German government, who, in presenting me to his wife, said that I was a Frenchman.
“He’s an enemy, then,” interrupted their son, a boy of apparently thirteen or fourteen years old.
That young gentleman had not been sent to school in Russia.
On entering the spacious and brilliant reception room, where the governor, his lady, and their numerous family awaited me, I could have imagined myself in London, or rather in Petersburg; for the lady of the house was ensconced, à la russe, in the little bower enclosed by gilded trellis, and raised a few steps, which occupied a corner of the salon, and which is called the altane. The governor received me with politeness, and led me across the room, past several male and female relatives who had met there, into the verdant cabinet, where I found his wife.
Scarcely had she invited me to sit down in this sanctuary when she thus addressed me: “Monsieur de Custine, does Elzéar still write fables?”
My uncle, Count Elzéar de Sabran, had been from his boyhood celebrated in the society of Versailles for his poetical talent, and he would have been equally so in public society if his friends and relations could have persuaded him to publish his collection of fables—a species of poetical code, enlarged by time and experience; for every circumstance of his life, every public and private event, has inspired him with one of these apologues, always ingenious, and often profound, and to which an elegant and easy versification, an original and piquant turn of expression, impart a peculiar charm. The recollection of this was far from my thoughts when I entered the house of the governor of Yaroslavl, for my mind was occupied with the hope, too rarely satisfied, of finding real Russians in Russia.
I replied to the lady of the governor by a smile of astonishment, which silently said—explain to me this mystery. The explanation was soon given. “I was brought up,” said the lady, “by a friend of your grandmother, Madame de Sabran; that friend has often spoken to me of her natural grace and charming wit, as well as of the mind and talents of your uncle and your mother; she has often even spoken to me of you, though she had left France before your birth. It is Madame ——— to whom I allude; she accompanied into Russia the Polignac family when they became émigrés, and since the death of the Duchess de Polignac she has never left me.”
In concluding these words Madame ——— presented me to her governess, an elderly person, who spoke French better than I, and whose countenance expressed penetration and gentleness.
I saw that I must once again renounce my dream of the boyars; a dream, which, notwithstanding its futility, did not leave me without awaking some regret; but I had where-with to indemnify myself for my mistake. Madame ———, the wife of the governor, belongs to one of the great families of Lithuania; she was born Princess ———. Over and above the politeness common to nearly all people of her rank in every land, she has acquired the taste and the tone of French society, as it existed in its most flourishing epoch; and, although yet young, she reminds me, by the noble simplicity of her manners, of the elderly persons whom I knew in my childhood. Those manners are the traditions of the old court; respect for every kind of propriety, good taste in its highest perfection, for it includes even good and kindly dispositions; in short, everything that was attractive in the higher circles of Paris at the time when our social superiority was denied by none; at the time when Madame de Marsan, limiting herself to a humble pension, retired voluntarily to a small apartment in the convent of the Assumption, and for ten years devoted her immense income to paying the debts of her brother the Prince de Guémenée,—by this noble sacrifice extenuating, as far as was in her power, the disgrace and scandal of a bankrupt nobleman.
All this will teach me nothing about the country I am inspecting, I thought to myself; nevertheless it will afford me a pleasure that I should be loath to deny myself, for it is one that has now become more rare, perhaps, than is the satisfaction of the simple curiosity which brought me here.
I fancied myself in the chamber of my grandmother,[2] though, indeed, on a day when the Chevalier de Boufflers was not there, nor Madame de Coislin, nor even the lady of the house: for those brilliant models of the character of intellect which formerly adorned French conversation have gone, never to return, even in Russia; but I found myself in the chosen circle of their friends and disciples, assembled, as it were, in their absence; and I felt as though we were waiting for them, and that they would soon reappear.
I was not in the least prepared for this species of emotion: of all the surprises of my journey it has been for me the most unexpected.
The lady of the house participated in my astonishment; for she told me of the exclamation she had made the previous evening, on perceiving my name at the bottom of the note I had sent to the governor. The singularity of the rencounter, in a region where I supposed myself as little known as a Chinese, immediately gave a familiar and friendly tone to the conversation, which became general, without ceasing to be agreeable and easy. There was nothing concerted or affected in the pleasure they seemed to take in seeing me. The surprise had been reciprocal: no one had expected me at Yaroslavl; I had only decided to take that route the day before leaving Moscow.
The brother of the governor’s wife, a Prince ———, writes our language perfectly well. He has published volumes of French verses, and was kind enough to present me with one of his collections.
Assuredly, he is fortunate who expresses his idea so well in a foreign language.
All the members of the ——— family vied with one another in doing me the honors of the house and of the city.
My books were lauded with indirect and ingenious praises, and were cited so as to recall to my mind a crowd of details that I had forgotten. The delicate and natural manner in which these quotations were introduced would have pleased me if they had less flattered me. The small number of books which the censorship allows to penetrate so far, remain popular a long time. I may say, not in my own personal praise, but in that of the times in which we live, that, in traveling over Europe, the only hospitality really worthy of gratitude which I have received has been that which I owe to my writings. They have created for me among strangers a small number of friends, whose kindness, ever new, has in no slight degree contributed to prolong my inborn taste for traveling and for poetry. If a position of so little importance as the one which I occupy in our literature has procured me such advantages, it is easy to conceive the influence which the talents that among us rule the thinking world, must exercise.
The wife of the governor of Yaroslavl has, at this moment, all her family united around her; several of her sisters, with their husbands and children, are lodged in her house; she admits likewise to her table the principal employees of her husband, who are inhabitants of the city; her son also is still attended by a tutor; so that at dinner there were twenty persons to sit down to table.
It is the custom of the North to precede the principal repast by a smaller refection, which is served in the drawing room a quarter of an hour before entering the dining room. This preliminary, which is destined to sharpen the appetite, is called in Russian, if my ear has not deceived me, zakuska. The servants bring upon trays, small plates filled with fresh caviar, such as is only eaten in this country, dried fish, cheese, salt meats, sea biscuits, and pastry; with these, bitter liqueurs, French brandy, London port, Hungarian wine, true Danzig Goldwasser, are also brought in; to which the company help themselves standing. A stranger, ignorant of the usages of the country, or an appetite easily satisfied, might very soon here make a meal, and remain afterwards a spectator only of the real dinner. The Russians eat plentifully, and keep a liberal table; but they are too fond of hashes, stuffing, little balls of mincemeat, and fish pâtés.
One of the most delicate fishes in the world is caught in the Volga, where it abounds. It is called the sterlet, and unites the flavor of the sea and freshwater fishes, without, however, resembling any that I have eaten elsewhere. This fish is large, its flesh light and fine; its head, pointed and full of cartilages, is considered delicate; the monster is seasoned very skillfully, but without many spices: the sauce that is served with it unites the flavor of wine, strong meat broth, and lemon juice. I prefer this national dish to all the other ragouts of the land, and especially to the cold and sour soup, that species of fish broth, iced, that forms the detestable treat of the Russians. They also make soups of sugared vinegar, of which I have tasted enough to prevent my ever asking for any more.
The governor’s dinner was good and well served, without superfluity, and without useless recherché. The abundance and excellent quality of the watermelons astonish me: it is said that they come from the environs of Moscow, but I should rather imagine they send to the Crimea for them. It is the custom in this country to place the dessert upon the table at the commencement of the dinner, and to serve it course by course. This method has its advantages, and its inconveniences: it seems to me only perfectly proper at great dinners.
The Russian dinners are of a reasonable length; and nearly all the guests disperse upon rising from table. Some practice the Oriental habit of the siesta; others take a walk or return to their business after drinking coffee. Dinner is not here the repast which finishes the labors of the day; and when I took leave of the lady of the house, she had the kindness to engage me to return and pass the evening with her. I accepted the invitation, for I felt it would be impolite to refuse it: all that is offered to me here is done with so much good taste, that neither my fatigue nor my wish to retire and write to my friends, is sufficient to preserve my liberty: such hospitality is a pleasant tyranny; it would be indelicate not to accept it; a carriage-and-four and a house are placed at my disposal, a whole family are troubling themselves to amuse me and to show me the country; and this is done without any affected compliments, superfluous protestations, or importunate empressement; I do not know how to resist so much rare simplicity, grace, and elegance; I should yield were it only from a patriotic instinct, for there is in these agreeable manners a souvenir of ancient France which affects and attracts me: it seems as though I had come to the frontiers of the civilized world to reap a part of the heritage of the French spirit of the eighteenth century, a spirit that has been long lost among ourselves. The inexpressible charm of good manners, and of simple language, reminds me of a paradox of one of the most intellectual men I have ever known: “There is not,” he says, “a bad action nor a bad sentiment that has not its source in a fault of manners; consequently, true politeness is virtue; it is all the virtues united.” He goes yet further; he pretends there is no other vice but that of coarseness.
At nine o’clock this evening, I returned to the house of the governor. We had first music, and afterwards a lottery.
One of the brothers of the lady of the house plays the violoncello in a charming manner; he was accompanied on the piano by his wife, a very agreeable woman. This duet, as well as many national airs, sung with taste, made the evening pass rapidly.
The conversation of Madame de ———, the old friend of my grandmother and of Madame de Polignac, contributed in no slight degree to shorten it. The lady has lived in Russia for forty-seven years; she has viewed and judged the country with discernment and justice, and she states the truth without hostility, and yet without rhetorical precautions: this is new to me; her frankness strangely contrasts with the universal dissimulation practiced by the Russians. An intelligent Frenchwoman, who has passed her life among them, ought, I think, to know them better than they know themselves; for they blind themselves in order the better to impose falsehood upon others. Madame de ——— said and repeated to me, that in this country the sentiment of honor is without power, except in the heart of the women: they have made it a matter of religion to be faithful to their word, to despise falsehood, to observe delicacy in money affairs, and independence in politics; in short, according to Madame de ———, the greater number of them possess what is wanted in the great majority of the men—probity in all the circumstances of life, whether of greater or less importance. In general, the Russian women think more than the men, because they act less. Leisure, that advantage inherent in a woman’s mode of life, is as advantageous to their character as to their understanding; they are better informed, less servile, and possess more energy of sentiment than the other sex. Heroism itself appears to them natural, and becomes easy. The Princess Troubetzkoy is not the only woman who has followed her husband to Siberia: many exiled men have received from their wives this sublime proof of devotion, which loses none of its value for being less rare than I imagined it: unfortunately, I do not know their names. Where will they find a historian and a poet?
Towards the close of the evening, before permitting me to leave, my hosts, with the view of paying me a compliment, expedited, by several days, a ceremony which had been looked forward to for six months in the family: it was the drawing of a lottery, the object of which was charity. All the prizes, consisting of articles made by the lady of the house, her friends and relatives, were tastefully spread upon the tables: the one which fell to me, I cannot say by chance (for my tickets had been carefully selected), was a pretty notebook with a varnished cover. I wrote in it the date, and added a few words by way of remembrance. In the times of our fathers, an impromptu in verse would have been suggested; but, in these days, when public impromptus abound ad nauseam, those of the salon are out of date. Ephemeral literature, politics, and philosophy, have dethroned the quatrain and the sonnet. I had not the ready wit to write a single couplet; but I should, in justice, add, that neither did I feel the ambition.
After bidding farewell to my amiable hosts, whom I am to meet again at the fair of Nizhny, I returned to my inn, very well satisfied with the day. The house of the peasant in which I lodged the day before yesterday, and the salon of today, in other words, Kamchatka and Versailles within a distance traversed in a few hours, present a contrast which describes Russia.
I sacrifice my nights to relate to my friends the objects that strike me during the day. My chapter is not finished, and dawn already appears.
The contrasts in this empire are abrupt; so much so, that the peasant and the lord do not seem to belong to the same land: the grandees are as cultivated as if they lived in another country; the serfs are as ignorant and savage as though they served under lords like themselves.
It is much less with the abuses of aristocracy that I reproach the Russian government, than with the absence of an authorized aristocratic power whose attributes might be clearly and constitutionally defined. Recognized political aristocracies have always struck me as being beneficent in their influence; whilst the aristocracies that have no other foundation than the chimeras, or the injustices of privileges, are pernicious, because their attributes remain undefined and ill regulated. It is true the Russian lords are masters, and too absolute masters, in their territories; whence arise those excesses that fear and hypocrisy conceal by humane phrases, softly pronounced, which deceive travelers, and, too often, the government also. But these men, though monarchs in their far-distant domains, have no power in the state; they do what they please on their own lands, defying the power of the emperor, by corrupting or intimidating his secondary agents; but the country is not governed by them; they enjoy no consideration in the general direction of affairs. It is only by becoming courtiers, by laboring for promotion in the chin, that they can obtain any public credit or standing. This life of the courtier excludes all elevation of sentiment, independence of spirit, and humane, patriotic views, which are essential elements of aristocratic bodies legally constituted in states organized to extend their power and to flourish long.
The government, on the other hand, equally excludes the just pride of the man who has made his fortune by his labor. It unites all the disadvantages of democracy with those of despotism, and rejects everything that is good in both systems.
Russia is governed by a class of subaltern employees, transferred direct from the public schools to the public administration. These individuals, who are very frequently the sons of men born in foreign lands, are noble so soon as they wear a cross at their buttonhole; and it is only the emperor who gives this decoration. Invested with the magical sign, they become proprietors of estates and of men; and thus, obtaining power without obtaining also that heritage of magnanimity natural in a chieftain born and habituated to command, the new lords use their authority like upstarts as they are, and render odious to the nation, and the world, the system of servitude established in Russia, at the period when ancient Europe began to destroy her feudal institutions. By virtue of their offices, these despots oppress the country with impunity, and incommode even the emperor; who perceives, with astonishment, that he is not so powerful as he imagined, though he dares not complain or even confess it to himself. This is the bureaucracy, a power, terrible everywhere, because its abuses are always made in the name of order, but more terrible in Russia than anywhere else. When we see administrative tyranny acting under Imperial despotism, we may tremble for a land where is established, without counterbalance, the system of government propagated in Europe at the time of the French Empire.
The emperors of Russia, equally mistaken in their confidence and their suspicion, viewed the nobles as rivals, and sought only to find slaves in the men they needed for ministers. Hence has sprung up the swarm of obscure agents who labor to govern the land in obedience to ideas not their own; from which it follows that they can never satisfy real wants. This class of employees, hostile in their hearts to the order of things which they direct, are recruited in a great measure from among the sons of the popes,—a body of vulgar aspirants, of upstarts without talent, for they need no merit to oblige the state to disembarrass itself of the burden which they are upon it; people who approach to all the ranks without possessing any; minds which participate alike in the popular prejudices and the aristocratic pretensions, without having the energy of the one or the wisdom of the other: to include all in one clause, the sons of the priests are revolutionists charged with maintaining the established order.
Half enlightened, liberal as the ambitious, as fond of oppressing as the slave, imbued with crude philosophical notions utterly inapplicable to the country which they call their own, though all their sentiments and semienlightened ideas come from abroad, these men are urging the nation towards a goal of which they are perhaps ignorant themselves, which the emperor has never imagined, and which is not one that true Russians or true friends of humanity will desire.
Their permanent conspiracy dates as far back as the time of Napoleon. The political Italian had foreseen the danger of the Russian power; and, wishing to weaken the enemy of revolutionized Europe, he had recourse, in the first place, to the influence of ideas. He profited by his friendly relations with the Emperor Alexander, and by the innate tendency of that prince towards liberal institutions, to send to Petersburg, under pretext of aiding in the accomplishment of the emperor’s designs, a great number of political workmen,—a kind of masked army, charged with secretly preparing the way for our soldiers. These skillful intriguers were instructed to mix themselves up with the government, and especially with the system of public education, and to instill into the minds of the rising generation doctrines opposed to the political religion of the land. Thus did the great warrior—heir to the French revolution and foe to the liberties of the world— throw from afar the seeds of trouble and of discord, because the unity of despotism appeared to him a dangerous weapon in the military government which constitutes the immense power of Russia.
That empire is now reaping the fruit of the slow and profound policy of the adversary it flattered itself that it had conquered,—an adversary whose posthumous Machiavellism survives reverses unheard of in the history of human wars. To the secretly working influence of these pioneers of our armies, and to that of their children and their disciples, I attribute in a great measure the revolutionary ideas which have taken root in many families, and even in the army; and the explosion of which has produced the conspiracies that we have seen hitherto breaking themselves against the strength of the established government. Perhaps I deceive myself, but I feel persuaded that the present emperor will triumph over these ideas, by crushing, even to the last man, those who defend them.
I was far from expecting to find in Russia such vestiges of our policy, and to hear from the mouths of Russians reproaches similar to those that the Spaniards have addressed to us for thirty-five years past. If the mischievous intentions which the Russians attribute to Napoleon were real, no interest, no patriotism could justify them. We cannot save one part of the world by deceiving the other. Our religious propagandism appears to me sublime, because the Catholic church accords with every form of government and every degree of civilization, over which it reigns with all the superiority of mind over body: but political proselytism, that is to say, the narrow spirit of conquest, or to speak yet more justly, the spirit of rapine justified by that skillful sophistry called glory, is odious; for, far from drawing together the human race, this contracted ambition divides them: unity can only give birth to elevated and extended ideas; but the politics of national interference are always little; its liberality is hypocritical or tyrannical; its benefits are ever deceptive: every nation should derive from within itself the means for the improvements it requires.
To conclude: the problem proposed, not by men, but by events, by the concatenation of circumstances, to an emperor of Russia, is to favor among the nation the progress of knowledge, in order to hasten the emancipation of the serfs; and further, to aim at this object by the improving of manners, by the encouraging of humanity and of legal liberty; in short, by ameliorating hearts with the view of alleviating destinies. Such is the condition imposed upon any man who would now reign, even at Moscow: but the peculiarity of the emperor’s position is, that he has to shape his course towards this object, keeping clear, on the one side, of the mute though well-organized tyranny of a revolutionary administration, and on the other, of the arrogance and the conspiracies of an aristocracy so much the more unquiet and formidable as its power is vague and undefined.
It must be owned that no sovereign has yet acquitted himself in this terrible task with so much firmness, talent, and good fortune as have been displayed by the Emperor Nicholas. He is the first of the modern Russian princes who has perceived the necessity of being a Russian in order to confer good upon the Russians. Undoubtedly history will say: This man was a great sovereign.
I have no time left for sleeping: the horses are already at my carriage, and I shall soon be on the road to Nizhny.
[1]Written 18th of August.
[2]The Countess de Sabran, afterwards Marchioness de Boufflers, who died at Paris in 1827, aged seventy-eight years.