AT THE MOMENT I was about to leave Moscow, a singular circumstance attracted all my attention, and obliged me to delay my departure.
I had ordered post-horses at seven o’clock in the morning: to my great surprise my valet de chambre awoke me at four, and on my asking the cause of this unnecessary hurry, he answered that he did not like to delay informing me of a fact which he had just learnt, and which appeared to him very serious. The following is the gist of what he related.
A Frenchman, whose name is M. Louis Pernet, and who arrived a few days ago in Moscow, where he lodged at a public hotel, has been arrested in the middle of the night—this very night,—and, after being deprived of his papers, has been taken to the city prison, and there placed in a cell. Such was the account which the waiter at our inn gave to my servant, who, after many questions, further learnt that M. Pernet was a young man about twenty-six years old, and in poor health; that he passed through Moscow last year, when he stayed at the house of a Russian friend, who afterwards took him into the country. This Russian was now absent, and the unfortunate prisoner had no other acquaintance in Moscow except another Frenchman, a M. R——, in whose company he had been traveling from the north of Russia. M. R—— lodged in the same hotel with the prisoner. His name struck me the moment I heard it, for it is the same as that of a man with whom I dined a few days before at the house of the governor of Nizhny. I immediately rose, and sought the waiter myself, to hear from his own lips the version of the story, and to ascertain beyond doubt the correctness of the name of M. R——, whose identity I was particularly desirous of ascertaining. The waiter told me, that having been sent on an errand by a foreigner about to leave Moscow, he was at Kopp’s hotel at the moment when the police left it, and he added that M. Kopp had related to him the affair, which he recounted in words that exactly accorded with the statement of Antonio.
As soon as I was dressed, I repaired to M. R——, and found, true enough, that he was the man of Nizhny. I found him out of bed; we recognized each other in a moment; but when I told him the object of my very early morning call, he appeared embarrassed.
“It is true that I have traveled,” he said, “with M. Pernet, but it was by mere chance; we met at Archangel, and from thence have proceeded in company: he has a very poor constitution, and his weak health gave me much uneasiness during the journey: I rendered him the services that humanity called for, but nothing more; I am not one of his friends; I know nothing of him.”
“I know still less of him,” I replied; “but we are all three Frenchmen, and we owe each other mutual aid in a country where our liberty and our life may be menaced any moment by a power which cannot be seen till it strikes.”
“Perhaps M. Pernet,” replied M. R——, “has got himself into this scrape by some imprudence. A stranger like himself, and without credit, what can I do? If he is innocent, the arrest will be followed by no serious consequences; if he is culpable, he will have to submit to the punishment. I can do nothing for him, I owe him nothing; and I advise you, sir, to be yourself very cautious in any steps you may take in his favor, as well as in your language respecting the affair.”
“But what will decide his guilt?” I exclaimed. “It will be first of all necessary to see him, to know to what he attributes this arrest, and to ask him what can be said or done for him.”
“You forget the country we are in,” answered M. R——: “he is in a dungeon; how could we get access to him? the thing is impossible.”
“What is also impossible,” I replied, rising, “is that Frenchmen—that any men, should leave their countryman in a critical situation, without even inquiring the cause of his misfortune.”
On leaving this very prudent traveling companion, I began to think the case more serious than I had at first supposed; and I considered that, to understand the true position of the prisoner, I ought to address myself to the French consul. Being obliged to wait the usual hour for seeing that personage, I ordered back my post-horses, to the great surprise and displeasure of the Feldjäger, as they were already at the door when I gave the countermand.
At ten o’clock, I made to the French consul the above relation of facts; and found that official protector of the French quite as prudent, and yet more cold, than M. R—— had appeared to me. Since he has lived in Moscow, this consul has become almost a Russian. I could not make out whether his answers were dictated by a fear founded on a knowledge of the usages of the country, or by a sentiment of wounded self-love, of ill-understood personal dignity.
“M. Pernet,” he said, “passed six months in Moscow and its environs, without having thought fit, during all that time, to make the smallest approach towards the consul of France. M. Pernet must look, therefore, to himself alone to get out of the situation in which his heedlessness has involved him. This word,” added the consul, “is perhaps not sufficiently strong.” He then concluded by repeating that he neither ought, nor could, nor would, mix himself up with the affair.
In vain did I represent to him, that, in his capacity as our consul, he owed to every Frenchman, without distinction of persons, and even if they failed in the laws of etiquette, his aid and protection; that the present question was not one of ceremony, but of the liberty and perhaps the life of a fellow-countryman; and that, under such a misfortune, all resentment should be at least suspended till the danger was over. I could not extract one word, not one single expression of interest in favor of the prisoner; nor even, when I reasoned on public grounds, and spoke of the dignity of France, and the safety of all Frenchmen who traveled in Russia, could I make any impression; in short, this second attempt aided the cause no better than the first.
Nevertheless, though I had not even known M. Pernet by name, and though I had no motive to take any personal interest in him, it seemed to me, as chance had made me acquainted with his misfortune, that it was no more than my duty to give him all the aid that lay in my power. I was at this moment strongly struck with a truth which is no doubt often present to the thoughts of others, but which had only until then vaguely and fleetingly passed before my mind—the truth that imagination serves to extend the sphere of pity, and to render it more active. I went even so far as to conclude in my own mind, that a man without imagination would be absolutely devoid of feeling. All my imaginative or creative faculties were busy in presenting to me, in spite of myself, this unhappy unknown man, surrounded by the phantoms of his prison solitude: I suffered with him, I felt his feelings, I shared his fears; I saw him, forsaken by all the world, discovering that his state was hopeless: for who would ever interest themselves in a prisoner in this land, so distant and so different from ours, in a society where friends meet together for amusement and separate in adversity. What a stimulus was this thought to my commiseration! “You believe yourself to be alone in the world; you are unjust towards Providence, which sends you a friend and a brother.” These were the words which I mentally addressed to the victim.
Meanwhile, the unhappy man could hope for no succor, and every hour that passed in his dreadful silence and monotony would plunge him deeper in despair: night would come with its train of specters; and then what terrors, what regrets would seize upon him! How did I pant to tell him that the zeal of a stranger should replace the loss of the faithless protectors on whom he had a right to depend! But all means of communication were impossible: the dismal hallucinations of the dungeon pursued me in the light of the sun, and notwithstanding the bright arch of heaven above my head, they shut me up, as it were, in dark, dank vaults; for in my distress, forgetting that the Russians apply the classic architecture to the construction even of prisons, I dreamt not of Roman colonnades, but of Gothic cells. Had my imagination less deeply impressed me with all these things, I should have been less active and persevering in my efforts in favor of an unknown individual. I was followed by a specter, and to rid myself of it no efforts could have been too great.
To have insisted on entering the prison would have been a step no less useless than dangerous. After long and painful doubt, I thought of another plan: I had made the acquaintance of several of the most influential people in Moscow; and though I had, two days ago, taken leave of everybody, I resolved to risk giving my confidence to the man for whom I had, among all the others, conceived the highest opinion.
Not only must I here avoid using his name, I must also take care not to allude to him in any way by which he could be identified.
When he saw me enter his room, he at once guessed the business that brought me; and without giving me time to explain myself, he told me that by a singular chance he knew M. Pernet personally, and believed him innocent, which caused his situation to appear inexplicable; but that he was sure political considerations could have alone led to such an imprisonment, because the Russian police never unmasks itself, unless compelled; that, no doubt, the existence of this foreigner had been supposed to have been altogether unknown in Moscow; but that now the blow was struck, his friends could only injure him by showing themselves; for if it were known that parties were interested in him, it would render his position far worse, as he would be removed to avoid all discovery and to stifle all complaints: he added therefore, that, for the victim’s sake, extreme circumspection was necessary. “If once he departs for Siberia, God only can say when he will return,” exclaimed my counselor; who afterwards endeavored to make me understand that he could not openly avow the interest he took in a suspected Frenchman; for being himself suspected of liberal principles, a word from him, intimating merely that he knew the prisoner, would suffice to exile the latter to the farther end of the world. He concluded by saying, “You are neither his relation nor his friend; you only take in him the interest that you believe you ought to take in a countryman, in a man whom you know to be in trouble; you have already acquitted yourself of the duty that this praiseworthy sentiment imposes on you; you have spoken to your consul; you had now, believe me, better abstain from any further steps; it will do no good, and you will compromise yourself for the man whose defense you gratuitously undertake. He does not know you, he expects nothing from you; continue, then, your journey, you will disappoint no hopes that he has conceived; I will keep my eye on him; I cannot appear in the affair, but I have indirect means which may be useful, and I promise to employ them to the utmost of my power. Once again, then, follow my advice, and pursue your journey.”
“If I were to set out,” I exclaimed, “I should not have a moment’s peace; I should be pursued by a feeling that would amount to remorse, when I recollected that the unfortunate man has me only to befriend him, and that I have abandoned him without doing anything.”
“Your presence here,” he answered, “will not even serve to console him, as he is and must continue wholly ignorant of the interest you take in him.”
“There are, then, no means of gaining access to the dungeon?”
“None,” replied the individual addressed, not without some marks of impatience at my thus persisting. “Were you his brother, you could do no more for him here than you have done. Your presence at Petersburg may, on the contrary, be useful to M. Pernet. You can inform the French ambassador of all that you know about this imprisonment; for I doubt whether he will hear anything of it from your consul. A representation made to the minister by a personage in the position of your ambassador, and by a man possessing the character of M. de Barante, will do more to hasten the deliverance of your countryman than you and I, and any twenty others could do in Moscow.”
“But the emperor and his ministers are at Borodino or at Moscow,” I answered, unwilling to take a refusal.
“All the ministers have not followed His Majesty,” he replied, still in a polite tone, but with increasing and scarcely concealed ill humor. “Besides, at the worst, their return must be awaited. You have, I repeat, no other course to take, unless you would injure the man whom you wish to serve, and expose yourself also to many unpleasant incidents, or perhaps to something worse,” he added, in a significant manner.
Had the person to whom I addressed myself been a place-man, I should have already fancied I saw the Cossacks advancing to seize me, to convey me to a dungeon like that of M. Pernet.
I felt that the patience of my adviser was at an end; I had nothing, in fact, to reply to his arguments: I therefore retired, promising to leave, and gratefully thanking him for his counsel.
“As it is obvious I can do nothing here, I will leave at once,” I said to myself: but the slow motions of my Feldjäger took up the rest of the morning, and it was past four in the afternoon before I was on the road to Petersburg.
The sulkiness of the courier, the want of horses, felt everywhere on the road on account of relays being retained for the household of the emperor and for military officers, as well as for couriers proceeding from Borodino to Petersburg, made my journey long and tedious: in my impatience, I insisted on traveling all night; but I gained nothing by this haste, being obliged, for want of horses, to pass six whole hours at Great Novgorod, within fifty leagues of Petersburg.
I was scarcely in a fitting mood to visit the cradle of the Slavic empire, and which became also the tomb of its liberty. The famous church of St. Sophia encloses the sepulchres of Vladimir Yaroslav, who died in 1051, of his mother Anna, and of an emperor of Constantinople. It resembles the other Russian churches, and perhaps is not more authentic than the ostensibly ancient cathedral at Nizhny Novgorod. I no longer believe in the dates of any old monuments that are shown me in Russia. But I still believe in the names of its rivers: the Volkhov represented to me the frightful scenes connected with the siege of this republican city, taken, retaken, and decimated by Ivan the Terrible. I could fancy I saw the Imperial hyena, presiding over carnage and pestilence, couched among the ruins of the city; and the bloody corpses of his subjects seemed to issue out of the river that was choked with their bodies, to prove to me the horrors of intestine wars. It is worthy of remark, that the correspondence of the Archbishop Pinen, and of other principal citizens of Novgorod with the Poles, was the cause which brought the evil on the city, where thirty thousand innocent persons perished in the combat, and in the executions and massacres invented and presided over by the czar. There were days on which six hundred were at once executed before his eyes; and all these horrors were enacted to punish a crime unpardonable from that epoch—the crime of clandestine communication with the Poles. This took place nearly three hundred years ago, in 1570. Great Novgorod has never recovered the stroke: she could have replaced her dead, but she could not survive the abolition of her democratic institutions: her whitewashed houses are no longer stained with blood; they appear as if they had been built only yesterday; but her streets are deserted, and three parts of her ruins are spread over the plain, beyond the narrow bounds of the actual city, which is but a shadow and a name. This is all that remains of the famous republic of the Middle Ages. Where are the fruits of the revolutions which never ceased to saturate the now almost desert soil with blood? Here, all is as silent as it was before the history. God has only too often had to teach us, that objects which men blinded with pride, viewed as a worthy end of their efforts, were really only a means of employing their superfluous powers during the effervescence of youth. Such are the principles of more than one heroic action.
For three centuries, the bell of the veche[1] has ceased to summon the people of Novgorod, formerly the most glorious and the most turbulent of the Russian populations, to deliberate upon their own affairs. The will of the czar stifles in every heart all sentiments, including even regret for the memory of effaced glory. Some years ago, frightful scenes occurred between the Cossacks and the inhabitants of the country, in the military colonies established in the vicinity of the decayed city. But the insurrection was stifled, and everything has returned to its accustomed order, that is, to the silence and peace of the tomb.
I was very happy to leave this abode, formerly famous for the disorders of liberty, now desolated by what is called good order,—a word which is here equivalent to that of death.
Although I made all possible haste, I did not reach Petersburg until the fourth day: immediately after leaving my carriage, I repaired to M. de Barante’s.
He was quite ignorant of the arrest of M. Pernet, and appeared surprised to hear of it through me, especially when he learnt that I had been nearly four days on the road. His astonishment redoubled when I related to him my unavailing endeavors to influence our consul—that official protector of the French—to take some step in favor of the prisoner.
The attention with which M. de Barante listened to me, the assurance which he gave me that he would neglect nothing to clear up this affair, the importance with which he appeared to invest the smallest facts that could interest the dignity of France and the safety of her citizens, put my conscience at ease and dissipated the phantoms of my imagination. The fate of M. Pernet was in the hands of his natural protector, whose ability and character became better warrenties for the safety of this unfortunate man than my zealous though powerless solicitations. I felt I had done all that I could for him and for the honor of my country. During the twelve or fourteen days that I remained at Petersburg, I purposely abstained from pronouncing the name of Pernet before the ambassador; and I left Russia without knowing the end of a story which had so much absorbed and interested me.
But while journeying towards France, my mind was often carried back to the dungeons of Moscow. If I had known all that was passing there, it would have been yet more painfully excited.
Not to leave the reader in the ignorance in which I remained for nearly six months, respecting the fate of the prisoner at Moscow, I insert here all that I have learnt since my return to France respecting the imprisonment of M. Pernet, and his deliverance.
One day, near the end of the winter of 1840, I was informed that a stranger was at my door, and wished to speak with me. I desired that he would give his name: he replied that he would give it to me only. I refused to see him; he persisted; I again refused. At last, renewing his entreaties, he sent up a line of writing without any signature, to say that I could not refuse listening to a man who owed to me his life, and who only wished to thank me.
This language appeared extraordinary. I ordered the stranger to be introduced. On entering the room he said—“Sir, it was only yesterday I learnt your address: my name is Pernet; and I come to express to you my gratitude; for I was told at Petersburg that it is to you I owe my liberty, and consequently my life.”
After the first surprise which such an address caused me, I began to notice the person of M. Pernet. He is one of that numerous class of young Frenchmen who have the appearance and the temperament of the men of southern lands; his eyes and hair are black, his checks hollow, his countenance everywhere equally pale; he is short and slight in figure; and he appeared to be suffering, though rather morally than physically. He discovered that I knew some members of his family settled in Savoy, who are among the most respectable people of that land of honest men. He told me that he was a lawyer; and he related that he had been detained in the prison of Moscow for three weeks, four days of which time he was placed in the dungeon. We shall see by his recital the way in which a prisoner is treated in this abode. My imagination had not approached the reality.
The two first days he was left without food! No one came near him; and he believed, for forty-eight hours, that they were determined to starve him to death in his prison. The only sound that he heard was that of the strokes of the rod, which, from five o’clock in the morning until night, were inflicted upon the unhappy slaves who were sent by their masters to this place, to receive correction. Add to that frightful sound, the sobs and screams of the victims, mingled with the menaces and imprecations of the tormentors, and you will form some faint idea of the moral as well as physical sufferings of our unhappy countryman during four weary days, and while still remaining ignorant of his crime.
After having thus penetrated against his will into the profound mystery of a Russian prison, he believed, not without reason, that he was destined to end his days there; for he said to himself, “If there had been any intention to release me, it is not here that I should be confined by men who fear nothing so much as to have their secret barbarity divulged.”
A slight partition alone separated his narrow cell from the inner court, where these cruelties were perpetrated.
The rod which, since the amelioration of manners, usually replaces the knout of Mongolic memory, is formed of a cane split into three pieces, an instrument which fetches off the skin at every stroke; at the fifth, the victim loses nearly all power to cry, his weakened voice can then only utter a prolonged sobbing groan. This horrible rattle in the throat of the tortured creatures pierced the heart of the prisoner, and presaged to him a fate which he dared not look in the face.
M. Pernet understands Russian; he was therefore present, without seeing anything, at many private tortures; among others, at those of two young girls, who worked under a fashionable milliner in Moscow. These unfortunate creatures were flogged before the eyes even of their mistress, who reproached them with having lovers, and with having so far forgotten themselves as to bring them into her house—the house of a milliner!—what an enormity! Meanwhile this virago exhorted the executioners to strike harder: one of the girls begged for mercy: they said that she was nearly killed, that she was covered with blood. No matter! She had carried her audacity so far as to say that she was less culpable than her mistress; and the latter redoubled her severity. M. Pernet assured me, observing that he thought I might doubt his assertion, that each of the unhappy girls received, at different intervals, a hundred and eighty blows. “I suffered too much in counting them,” he added, “to be deceived as to the number.”
A man feels the approach of insanity when present at such horrors, and yet unable to succor the victims.
Afterwards, serfs and servants were brought by stewards, or sent by their masters, with the request that they might be punished; there was nothing, in short, but scenes of atrocious vengeance and frightful despair, all hidden from the public eye.[2] The unhappy prisoner longed for the obscurity of night, because the darkness brought with it silence; and though his thoughts then terrified him, he preferred the evils of imagination to those of reality. This is always the case with real sufferers. It is only the dreamers who have comfortable beds and good tables, who pretend the evils we fancy exceed those that we feel.
At last, after four times twenty-four hours of a torment which would, I think, surpass all our efforts to picture, M. Pernet was taken from his dungeon, still without any explanation, and transferred to another part of the prison.
From thence he wrote to M. de Barante, by General ———, on whose good offices he thought he could reckon.
The letter did not reach its address; and when afterwards the writer demanded an explanation of this circumstance, the general excused himself by subterfuges, and concluded by swearing to M. Pernet, on the Gospel, that the letter had not been put in the hands of the minister of police, and never would be! This was the utmost extent of devotion that the prisoner could obtain from his friend: and this is the fate of human affections when they pass under the yoke of despotism.
At the end of three weeks—which had been an eternity to M. Pernet—he was released without any form of process, and without even being able to learn the cause of his imprisonment.
His reiterated questions, addressed to the director of police in Moscow, procured for him no explanations; he was merely told that his ambassador had claimed him; and this was accompanied with an order to leave Russia. He asked, and obtained permission to take the route of Petersburg.
He wished to thank the French ambassador for the liberty which he owed to him; and also to obtain some information as to the cause of the treatment he had undergone. M. de Barante endeavored, but in vain, to divert him from the project of addressing M. de Benkendorff, the minister of the Imperial police. The liberated man demanded an audience: it was granted him. He said to the minister that, being ignorant of the cause of the punishment that he had received, he wished to know his crime before leaving Russia.
The statesman briefly answered, that he would do well to carry his inquiries on the subject no further, and dismissed him, repeating the order that he should, without delay, leave the empire.
Such is all the information that I could obtain from M. Pernet. This young man, like everyone else who has lived some time in Russia, has acquired a mysterious and reserved tone of language, to which foreigners are as liable as the native inhabitants. One would say that in that empire, a secret weighs upon all minds.
On my continuing my inquiries, M. Pernet further stated, that on his first journey to the country, they had given him, in his passport, the title of merchant, and on the second, that of lawyer. He added a more serious circumstance, namely, that before reaching Petersburg, while in a steamboat on the Baltic, he had freely expressed his opinion of Russian despotism, before several individuals whom he did not know.
He assured me, on leaving, that his memory could recall no other circumstance that could account for the treatment he had received at Moscow. I have never seen him since; though, by a singular chance, I met, two years after, a member of his family, who said he knew of the services I had rendered to his young relative, and thanked me for them. This family, I repeat, are respected by all who know them in the kingdom of Sardinia.
The last moments of my stay in Petersburg were employed in inspecting various establishments that I had not seen on my visit to that city.
Prince ——— showed me, among other curiosities, the immense works of Colpina, the arsenal of the Russian arsenals, which is situated some leagues from the capital. In this manufactory are prepared all the articles required for the Imperial marine. Colpina is reached by a road seven leagues in length, the last half of which is execrable. The establishment is directed by an Englishman, M. Wilson, who is honored with the rank of general (all Russia is converted into an army). He showed to us his machines, like a true Russian engineer, not permitting us to overlook a nail or a screw: under his escort we surveyed about twenty workshops, of enormous size. The extreme complaisance of the director deserved much gratitude, though I expressed but little, and that little was more than I felt; fatigue renders a man almost as ungrateful as ennui.
The day after my journey to Colpina, I visited the Academy of Painting, a superb and stately edifice, which up to the present time contains but few good works. How can they be expected in a land where the young artists wear uniform? I found all the pupils of the Academy enrolled, dressed, and commanded like marine cadets. This fact alone denotes a profound contempt for the object pretended to be patronized, or rather a great ignorance of the nature and the mysteries of art; professed indifference would be less indicative of barbarism. There is nothing free in Russia, except objects for which the government does not care; it cares only too much for the arts; but it is ignorant that they cannot dispense with liberty, and that this sympathy between the works of genius and the independence of man would alone attest the nobleness of the artist’s profession.
The vicinity of the pole is unfavorable to the arts, with the exception of poetry, which can sometimes dispense with all material, except the human soul; it is then the volcano under the ice. But for the inhabitants of these dreadful climates, music, painting, the dance—all those pleasures of sensation which are partially independent of mind—lose their charms in losing their organs. What are Rembrandt, Correggio, Michelangelo, and Raphael, in a dark room? The North has doubtless it own kind of beauty, but it is still a palace without light: all the attractive train of youth, with their pastimes, their smiles, their graces, and their dances, confine themselves to those blessed regions where the rays of the sun, not content with gliding over the surface of the earth, warm and fertilize its bosom by piercing it from on high.
In Russia a double gloom pervades everything—the fear of power and the want of sun. The national dances resemble rounds led by shadows under the gleam of a twilight which never ends. Mademoiselle Taglioni herself (alas! for Mademoiselle Taglioni!) is not a perfect dancer at St. Petersburg. What a fall for La Sylphide! But when she walks in the streets —for she walks at present—she is followed by footmen in handsome cockades and gold lace; and the newspapers overwhelm her every morning with articles containing the most preposterous praises I have ever seen. This is all the Russians, notwithstanding their cleverness, can do for the arts and for artistes. What the latter want is a heaven to give them life, a public which can understand them, a society which can excite and inspire them. These are necessaries: rewards are supererogatory. It is not, however, in a country contiguous to Lapland, and governed under the system of Peter the Great, that such things are to be sought for. I must wait for the Russians’ establishment in Constantinople, before I can know of what they are really capable in the fine arts and in civilization.
I left France scared by the abuses of a false liberty; I return to my country persuaded that if, logically speaking, the representative system is not the most moral form of government, it is, practically, the most wise and moderate; preserving the people on one side from democratic license, and on the other, from the most glaring abuses of despotism: I therefore ask myself if we ought not to impose a silence upon our antipathies, and submit without murmur to a necessary policy, and one which, after all, brings to nations prepared for it, more good than evil. It is true that hitherto this new and wise form of government has only been able to establish itself by usurpation. Perhaps these final usurpations have been rendered inevitable by preceding errors. This is a religious question, which time, the wisest of God’s ministers upon earth, will resolve to our posterity. I am here reminded of the profound idea of one of the most enlightened and cultivated intellects in Germany, M. Varnhagen von Ense:
“I have often labored,” he wrote to me one day, “to discover who were the prime movers of revolutions; and, after thirty years’ meditation, I have come to the conclusion that my earliest opinion was right, and that they are caused by the men against whom they are directed.”
Never shall I forget my feelings in traveling from Niemen to Tilsit: it was more especially then that I did justice to the observation of my host at Lübeck. A bird escaped from its cage could not have been more joyous. I can speak and write all that I think: I am free! were my exulting exclamations. The first real letter that I dispatched to Paris was sent from this frontier: it would cause quite a sensation in the little circle of my friends, who, until they received it, had, no doubt, been the dupes of my official correspondence. The following is the copy of that letter:
TILSIT, THURSDAY, 26TH SEPTEMBER , 1839.
You will, I hope, have as much pleasure in reading the above date as I have in writing it: here I am beyond the empire of uniformity, minutiae, and difficulties. I hear the language of freedom, and I feel as if in a vortex of pleasure, a world carried away by new ideas towards inordinate liberty. And yet I am only in Prussia: but in leaving Russia, I have again found houses the plan of which has not been dictated to a slave by an inflexible master, but which are freely built: I see a lively country freely cultivated (it is of Prussia I am speaking), and the change warms and gladdens my heart.
In short, I breathe! I can write to you without carefully guarding my words for fear of the police—a precaution almost always insufficient; for there is as much of the susceptibility of self-love as of political prudence in the espionage of the Russians. Russia is the most gloomy country, and is inhabited by the most handsome men that I have ever beheld: a country in which women are scarcely seen, cannot be gay. Here I am, escaped from it, and without the smallest accident. I have traveled two hundred and fifty leagues in four days, by roads often wretched, often magnificent; for the Russian spirit, friend as it is to uniformity, cannot attain a real state of order: the characteristics of its administration are meddlesomeness, negligence, and corruption. A sincere man in the empire of the czar would pass for a fool.
I have now a journey of two hundred leagues to perform before I reach Berlin; but I look forward to it as a mere excursion of pleasure.
Good roads throughout the distance, good inns, beds on which one may lie down, the order of houses managed by women—all seemed delightful and novel. I was particularly struck with the varied architecture of the buildings, the air of freedom in the peasants, and the gaiety of the female sex among them. Their good humor inspired me with a kind of fear: it was an independence, the consequences of which I dreaded for them, for I had myself almost lost the memory of it. I saw towns built spontaneously, before any government had imagined a plan of them. Ducal Prussia does not assuredly pass for a land of license; and yet, in passing through the streets of Tilsit, and afterwards those of Königsberg, I could have fancied myself at a Venetian carnival. My feelings brought to my memory a German of my acquaintance, who, after having been obliged, by business, to pass whole years in Russia, was at last able to leave that country forever. He was accompanied by a friend; and had scarcely set foot on deck of the English vessel, which was about to weigh anchor, when he threw himself into his companion’s arms, exclaiming, “God be praised, we may now breathe freely and speak openly!”
Many people have, doubtless, felt the same sensation: but why has no traveler before recorded it? Here, without comprehending, I marvel at the prestige which the Russian government exercises over minds. It obtains silence, not only from its own subjects—that is nothing,—but it makes itself respected, even at a distance, by strangers escaped from its iron discipline. The traveler either praises it or is silent: this is a mystery which I cannot comprehend. If ever the publication of this journey should procure me the explanation of the marvel, I shall have additional reason to applaud myself for my sincerity.
I had intended to return from Petersburg into Germany, by way of Vilna and Warsaw; but I changed that project.
Miseries like those which Poland suffers cannot be attributed entirely to fatality: in prolonged misfortunes, we may always look to faults as well as to circumstances. To a certain point, nations, like individuals, become accomplices of the fate which pursues them; they appear accountable for the reverses which, blow after blow, they have to suffer: for, to attentive eyes, destinies are only the development of characters. On perceiving the result of the errors of a people punished with so much severity, I might not be able to abstain from reflections of which I should repent. To represent their case to the oppressors would be a task we should impose upon ourselves with a kind of joy, sustained, as we should feel, by the idea of courage and generosity which attaches to the accomplishment of a perilous, or, at least, painful duty: but to wound the heart of the victim, to overwhelm the oppressed, though even with deserved strokes, with just reproaches, is an executioner’s office, to which the author who does not despise his own pen will never abase himself.
This was my reason for renouncing my proposed journey through Poland.
[1]Popular assembly.
[2]See, in Dickens’s American Notes, extracts from the United States’ papers, concerning the treatment of the slaves; presenting a remarkable resemblance between the excesses of despotism and the abuses of democracy.