In the morning, the first question that the wondering owner of the house put to his guest, the captain of hussars, was, as to the meaning of his nocturnal ride, and of the evolutions of his people around his person. " О ! nothing!" replied the officer, without the least embarrassment: "my servants are novices; you will have much company at Easter; people are coming here from every quarter; I therefore merely thought it best to make a rehearsal of my entree into church."
I must now give an account of my departure from Nijni, which it will be seen was less brilliant than the nocturnal ride of the captain of hussars.
On the evening that I accompanied the governor to the empty Russian theatre, I met, after leaving him, an acquaintance who took me to the cafe of the gypsies, situated in the most lively part of the fair: it was nearly midnight, but this house was still full of people, noise, and light. The women struck me as being very handsome ; their costume, although in appearance the same as that of other Russian females, takes a foreign character when worn by them : there
THE VIRTUES OF OUTCASTS.249
is magic in their glances, and their features and attitudes are graceful, and at the same time imposing. In short, they resemble the sibyls of Michael Angelo.
Their singing is about the same as that of the gypsies at Moscow, but if any thing, I thought it yet more expressive, forcible, and varied. I am assured that they have much pride of character, that they have warm passions, yet are neither light nor mercenary, and that they often repel, with disdain, very advantageous offers.
The more I see, the more I am astonished at the remains of virtue in persons who are not virtuous. Individuals whose state is the most decried, are often, like nations degraded by their governments, full of great qualities, ill-understood; whilst, on the contrary, we are disagreeably surprised to discern weakness in people of high character, and a puerile disposition in nations said to be well governed. The conditions of human virtues are nearly always impenetrable mysteries to the mind of man.
The idea of rehabilitation, which I here only vaguely point out, has been laid open and defended, with all the power of talent, by one of the boldest minds of our own or any epoch. It seems as though Victor Hugo had sought to consecrate his theatre to revealing to the world all that remains of human, that is, of divine, in the souls of those creatures of God who are the most reprobated by society : this design is more than moral, it is religious. To extend the sphere of pity is to perform a pious work : the multitude is often cruel by levity, by habit, or by principle, but yet more often by mistake. To cure, if it be possible, the wounds of hearts ill-understood, M 5
250VISIT TO KAZAN ABANDONED.
without yet more deeply injuring other hearts also worthy of compassion, is to associate ourselves in the designs of Providence, and to enlarge the kingdom of heaven.
The night was far advanced when we left the gypsies; stormy clouds, which swept over the plain, had suddenly changed the temperature. The long, deserted streets of the fair were filled with ponds of water, through which our horses dashed without relaxing their speed ; fresh squalls, bringing over black clouds, announced more rain, and drove the water, splashed aside by the horses, in our faces. " Summer is at last gone," said my cicerone. " I feel you are only too right," I answered; " I am as cold as if it were winter." I had no cloak : in the morning we had been suffocated with the heat; on returning to my room, I was freezing. I sat down to write for two hours, and then retired to rest in the icy fit of fever. In the morning, when I wished to get up, a vertigo seized me, and I fell again on my couch, unable to dress myself.
This annoyance was the more disagreeable, as I had intended leaving on that very day for Kazan: I wished at least to set my foot in Asia; and with this view had engaged a boat to descend the Volga, whilst my feldjäger had been directed to bring my carriage empty to Kazan, to convey me back to Nijni by land. However, my zeal had a little cooled after the governor of Nijni had proudly displayed to me plans and drawings of Kazan. It is still the same city from one end of Eussia to another: the great square, the broad streets, bordered with diminutive houses, the house of the governor, with ornamented
MEDICAL ADVICE.251
pillars and a pediment; decorations even more out of place in a Tartar than in a Russian town; barracks, cathedrals in the style of temples; nothing, in short, was wanting; and I felt that the whole tiresome architectural repetition was not worth the trouble of prolonging my journey two hundred leagues in order to visit. But the frontiers of Siberia and the recollections of the siege still tempted me. It became necessary, however, to renounce the journey, and to keep quiet for four days.
The governor very politely came to see me in m) humble bed. At last, on the fourth day, feeling my indisposition increase, I determined to call in a doctor. This individual said to me,—
" You have no fever, you are not yet ill, but you will be seriously so if you remain three days longer at Nijni. I know the influence of this air upon certain temperaments; leave it; you will not have travelled ten leagues without finding yourself better, and the day after you will be well again."
" But I can neither eat, sleep, nor walk, nor even move without severe pains in my head: what will become of me if I am obliged to stop on the road ? "
" Cause yourself to be carried into your coach: the autumn rains have commenced: I repeat, that I cannot answer for you if you remain at îsijni."
This doctor is scientific and experienced : he has passed several years at Paris, after having previously studied in Germany. His look inspired me with confidence ; and the day after I received his advice I entered my carriage, in the midst of a beating rain and an icy wind. It was unpleasant enough to discourage the strongest traveller: nevertheless, at. the M 6
252 RUSSIAN IDEA 0Г FREE GOVERNMENTS.
second stage, the prediction of the doctor was fulfilled; I began to breathe more freely, though fatigue so overpowered me that I was obliged to stop and pass the night in a miserable lodging: the next day I was again in health.
During the time spent in my bed at Nijni, my guardian spy grew tired of om` prolonged stay at the fair, and of his consequent inaction. One morning he came to my valet-de-chambre, and said to him, in German, " When do we leave ? "
" I cannot tell; Monsieur is ill."
"Is he ill?"
" Do you suppose that it is to please himself that he keeps his bed in such a room as you found for Mm here?"
" What is the matter with him ? "
" I do not know at all."
"Why is he ill?"
" Good heavens ! you had better go and ask him."
This wliy appears to me worthy of being noted.
The man has never forgiven me the scene in the coach. Since that day his manners and his coimte-nance have changed, which proves to me that there always remains some corner for the natural disposition, and for sincerity in even the most profoundly-dis-simulatiii£ï characters. I therefore think all the better of him for his rancour : I had believed him incapable of any primitive sentiment.
The Russians, like all new comers in the civilised world, are excessively susceptible: they cannot \n-derstand generalities; they take every thing for personalities : nowhere is France so ill understood. The liberty of thinking and speaking is more incom-
VLADIMIE.253
prehensible than any thing else to these people. Those who pretend to judge our country, say to me, that they do not really believe our king abstains from punishing the writers who daily abuse him in Paris.
" Nevertheless," I answer them, " the fact is there to convince you."
" Yes, yes, you talk of toleration," they reply, with a knowing air ; " it is all very well for the multitude and for foreigners : but your government punishes secretly the too audacious journalists."
When I repeat that every thing is public in France, they laugh sneeringly, politely check themselves; but they do not believe me.
The city of Vladimir is often mentioned in history : its aspect is like all the other Russia
n cities — that eternal type with which the reader is only too familiar. The country, also, that I have travelled over from Xijni resembles the rest of Russia — a forest without trees, interrupted by towns without life — barracks, raised sometimes upon heaths, sometimes upon marshes, and the spirit of a regiment to animate them. When I tell the Russians that their woods are badly managed, and that their country will in time be without fuel, they laugh me in the face. It has been calculated how many thousands of years it will require to consume the wood which covers the soil of an immense portion of the empire ; and this calculation satisfies every body. It is written in the estimates sent in by each provincial governor, that each province contains so many acres of forests. Upon these data the statistical department goes to work ; but before performing their purely arithmetical
254THE USE OF A FELDJÄGEE.
labour of adding sums to make a total, the calculators do not think of visiting those forests upon paper. If they did, they would in most cases find only a few thickets of brushwood, amid plains of fern and rushes. But with their written satisfactory reports, the Russians trouble themselves very little about the want of the only riches proper to their soil. Their woods are immense in the bureau of the minister, and this is sufficient for them. The day may be foreseen when, as a consequence of this administrative supineness and security, the people will warm themselves by the fires made of the old dusty papers accumulated in the public offices: these riches increase daily.
My words may appear bold and even revolting ; for the sensitive self-love of the Russians imposes upon foreigners duties of delicacy and propriety to which I do not submit. My sincerity will render me culpable in the eyes of the men of this country. What ingratitude ! the minister gives me a feldjäger; the presence of his uniform spares me all the difficulties of the journey; and therefore am I bound, in the opinion of the Russians, to approve of every thing with them. That foreigner, they think, would outrage all the laws of hospitality if he permitted himself to criticise a country where so much regard has been shown towards him. Notwithstanding all this, T hold myself free to describe what I see, and to pass my opinion upon it.
To appreciate, as I ought to do, the favour accorded me by the director-general of the posts, in furnishing me with a courier, it will at least be right to state the discomforts which his obliging civility has spared me. Had I set out for Nijni with a common servant
FALSE DELICACY.
255
only, we should, however well he might have spoken Russian, have been delayed by the tricks and frauds of the postmasters at nearly every stage. They would at first have refused us horses, and then have showed us empty stables, to convince us there were none. After an hour's parley they would have found us a set that they would pretend belonged to some peasant, who would eondeseend to spare them for twice or thrice the charge established by the imperial post-regulations. We might at first have refused ; the horses would have been taken away ; till at last, tired of the war, we should have concluded by humbly imploring the return of the animals, and by complying with every demand. The same scene would have been renewed at each out-of-the-way post. This is the manner in which inexperienced and unprotected foreigners here travel.
The Russians are always on their guard against truth, which they dread: but I, who belong to a community where every thing is transacted openly, why should I embarrass myself with the scruples of these men, who say nothing, or merely darkly whisper unmeaning phrases, and beg their neighbours to keep them a secret. Every open and elearly-defined statement causes a stir in a country where not only the expression of opinions, but also the recital of the most undoubted facts, is forbidden. A Frenchman cannot imitate this absurdity; but he ought to note it.
Russia is governed; God knows when she will be civilised.
Putting no faith in persuasion, the monarch draws every thing to himself, under pretext that a rigor-
256
CENTRALISATION.
ous system of centralisation is indispensable to the government of an empire so prodigiously extended as is Russia. This system is perhaps necessary to the principle of blind obedience : but enlightened obedience is opposed to the false idea of simplification, which has for more than a century influenced the successors of the Czar Peter, and their subjects also. Simplification, carried to this excess, is not power, it is death. Absolute authority ceases to be real; it becomes a phantom, when it has only the images of men to exercise itself upon.
Russia will never really become a nation until the day when its prince shall voluntarily repair the evil committed by Peter I. But will there ever be found, in such a country, a sovereign courageous enough to admit that he is only a man ?
It is necessary to see Russia, to appreciate all the difficulty of this political reformation, and to understand the energy of character that is necessary to work it.
I am now writing at a post-house between Vladimir and Moscow.
Among all the chances and accidents by which a traveller is in danger of losing his life on a Russian high road, the imagination of the reader would be at fault to single out the one by which my life has been just menaced. The danger was so great, that without the address, the strength, and the presence of mind of my Italian servant, I should not be the writer of the following account.
It was necessary that the Schah of Persia should
RENCONTRE WITH AN ELETHANT.257
have an object in conciliating the friendship of the Emperor of Russia, and that with this view, building his expectations upon bulky presents, he should send to the Czar one of the most enormous black elephants of Asia ; it was also needful that this walking tower should be clothed with superb hangings, serving as a caparison for the colossus, and that he should be escorted by a cortege of horsemen, resembling a cloud of grasshoppers; that the whole should be followed by a file of camels, who appeared no larger than donkeys by the side of this elephant, the most enormous that I have ever beheld; it was yet further necessary, that at the summit of the living monument, should be seen a man with olive complexion and oriental costume, carrying a parasol, and sitting crosslegged upon the back of the monster; and finally, it was necessary, that whilst this potentate of the desert was thus forced to journey on foot towards Petersburg, where the climate will soon transfer him to the collection of the mammoths and the mastodons, I should be travelling post by the same route ; and that my departure from Vladimir should so coincide with that of the Persians, that, at a certain point of the deserted road, the gallop of my Russian horses should bring me behind them, and make it necessary to pass by the side of the giant; — it required nothing less, I say, than all these combined circumstances to explain the danger caused by the terror that seized my four horses, on seeing before them an animated pyramid, moving as if by magic in the midst of a crowd of strange-looking men and beasts.
Their astonishment as they approached the colossus
258
AN ACCIDENT.
was at first shown by a general start aside, by extraordinary neighings and snortings, and by refusing to proceed. But the words and the whip of the coachman at length so far mastered them as to compel them to pass the fantastic object of their terror. They submitted trembling, their manes stood erect, and scarcely were they alongside of the monster than, reproaching themselves as it were for a courage, which was nothing more than fear of another object, they yielded to their panic, and the voice and reins of the driver became useless. The man was conquered at the moment when he thought himself the conqueror: scarcely had the horses felt that the elephant was behind them, than they clashed off at full speed, heedless as to where their blind frenzy might carry them. This furious course had very nearly cost us our lives: the coachman, bewildered and powerless, remained immovable on his seat, and slackened the reins; the feldjäger, placed beside him, partook of his stupefaction and helplessness. Antonio and I, seated within the calèche, which was closed on account of the weather and my ailment, remained pale and mute: our species of tarandasse has no doors;
it is a boat, over the sides of which we have to step to get in or out. On a sudden, the maddened horses swerved from the road, and dashed at an almost perpendicular bank, about ten feet high: one of the small fore-wheels was already buried in the bank-side ; two of the horses had reached the top without breaking their traces; I saw their feet on a level with our heads; one strain more, and the coach would have followed, but certainly not upon its wheels. I thought that it was all over with us. The cossacks who
AN ACCIDENT.
259
escorted the puissant cause of this peril, seeing our critical situation, had the prudence to avoid following us, for fear of further exciting our horses: I, without even thinking of springing from the carriage, had com-mendedmy soul to God, when, suddenly, Antonio disappeared. I thought he was killed: the head and leather curtains of the calòche concealed the scene from me; but at the same moment I felt the horses stop. " We are saved," cried Antonio. This ice touched me, for he himself was beyond all danger, after having succeeded in getting out of the calèche without accident. His rare presence of mind had indicated to him the moment favourable to springing out with the least risk : afterwards, with that agility which strong emotions impart, but which they cannot explain, he found himself, without knowing how, upon the top of the bank, at the heads of the two horses who had scaled it, and whose desperate efforts threatened to destroy us all. The carriage was just about to overturn when the horses were stopped; but Antonio's activity gave time to the others to follow his example; the coachman was in a moment at the heads of the two other horses, while the courier propped up the coach. At the same moment the cossack-guard of the elephant, who had put their horses to a gallop, arrived to our assistance; they made me alight, and helped my people to hold the still trembling horses. Never was an accident more nearly being disastrous, and never was one repaired at less cost. Not a screw of the coach was disturbed, and scarcely a strap of harness. broken.
Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia Page 84