Those men who believe her mad would not dare to take from her the child of her brother: no one thinks of disputing with her this precious prey, rescued thus wonderfully from the jaws of death. Such a miracle of love will console even the exiled father, whose heart will again feel a thrill of pleasure, when he
136ТПЕ HISTORY OF THELENEF.
knows that liis son has been saved, and saved by Xenie !
A goat follows her to nourish the infant. The virgin mother may sometimes be seen, a living picture, seated in the sun among the dark ruins of the eastle in which she was born, and smiling fondly on the child of her soul, the son of the hapless exile.
She cradles the little one upon her knees with a virgin graee, and his awaking brings a smile of angelic delight upon her eountenanee. Without knowing or hating the world, she has passed from eharity to love, from love to madness, from madness to maternity. God watches over her!
Sometimes she appears struck with some sweet and sad remembrance : then her lips, the senseless echoes of the past, murmur mechanically these mysterious words — the last and only expression of her intellectual life, and of which not one of the inhabitants of Vologda can divine the meaning, — ' It is I, then, whom he loved ! '
Neither the Russian poet nor myself have shrunk from the expression of
' О Vergine Madre, figlio del tuo figlio,' *
or profaned the profound mystery that is indicated in those few words.
* II Paradiso of Dante, cant. 33. i. v.
ANXIETY TO REACH MOSCOW.137
PKTERSBURC IN THE ABSENCE OF THE EMPEROR.—CHARACTER OF
THE COURTIERS.THE TCHINN.ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN. —
DESTRUCTION OF THE ARISTOCRACY. CHARACTER OF PETER
THE GREAT.— THE TCHINN DIVIDED INTO FOURTEEN CLASSES.
AN IMMENSE POWER IN THE HANDS OF THE EMPEROR. OP
POSITE OPINIONS ON THE FUTURE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA.
RUSSIAN HOSPITALITY.—POLITE FORMALITIES. RESEMBLANCE
TO THE CHINESE. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE RUSSIANS AND
THE FRENCH.RUSSIAN HONESTY. — OPINION OF NAPOLEON. —
THE ONLY SINCERE MAN IN THE EMPIRE.SPOILED SAVAGES.
ERRORS OF PETER THE GREAT. ABSURD ARCHITECTURE.
BEAUTY OF THE QUAYSTHE GREAT SQUARETHE CHURCHES.
PALACE OF THE TAURIDA. ANTIQUE VENUS.THE HERMI
TAGE. PICTURE GALLERY.PRIVATE SOCIAL CODE OF THE
EMPRESS CATHERINE.
I had promised my friends not to return to France without seeing Moscow, the fabulous city — fabulous in spite of history; for the grandeur of the events connected with it, though they recall the most positive and clearly- defined occurrences of our age, renders its name poetical beyond all other names.
This scene of an epic poem has a sublimity which contrasts, in a whimsical manner, with the spirit of an age of mathematicians and# stock-jobbers. I am therefore especially impatient to reach Moscow^ for which city I set out in two days. My impatience will not, however, prevent my expatiating on all that may strike me before arriving there, for I mean to
138 PETERSBURG IN THE EMPEROR'S ABSENCE.
complete, as far as I am able, the picture of this vast and singular empire.
It is impossible to describe the dulness of St. Petersburg during the absence of the emperor. At no time does the city exhibit what may be called gaiety; but without the court, it is a desert. The reader is aware that it is constantly menaced with destruction by the sea. This morning, while traversing its solitary quays and empty streets, I said to myself, ' Surely the city must be about to be inundated; the inhabitants have fled, and the water will soon recover possession of the marsh.' Nothing of the kind : Petersburg is lifeless only because the Emperor is at Peterhoif. The water of the Neva, driven back by the sea, rises so high, and the banks are so low, that this large inlet, with its innumerable arms, resembles a stagnant inundation, an overflowing marsh. They call the Neva a river, but it is for want of a more precise signification. At Petersburg the Neva has already become the sea; higher up, it is a channel of a few leagues in length, which serves to convey the superfluous waters of Lake Ladoga into the Gulf of Finland.
At the period when the quays of Petersburg were built, a taste for structures of small elevation prevailed among the Russians. The adoption of this taste was very injudicious in a country where the snow, during eight months in the year, diminishes the height of the Avails by six feet; and where the surface of the soil presents no variety that might, in any degree, relieve the monotony of the regular circle which forms the unchangeable line of horizon, serving as a frame for scenes level as the ocean. In
APPEARANCE OF THE CITY.139
my youth, I inhaled enthusiasm at the feet of the mountainous coasts of Calabria, before landscapes all of whose lines, excepting those of the sea, were vertical. Here, on the contrary, I see only one plane surface terminated by a perfectly horizontal line drawn betwixt the sky and the water. The mansions, palaces, and colleges which line the Neva, seem scarcely to rise above the soil, or rather the sea : some have only one story, the loftiest not more than three, and all appear dilapidated. The masts of the vessel overshoot the roofs of the houses. These roofs are of painted iron; they are light and elegant, but very flat, like those of Italy, whereas pointed roofs are alone proper in countries where snow abounds. In Russia, we are shocked at every step by the results of imitation without reflection.
Between the square blocks of an architecture which pretends to be Italian, run wide, straight, and empty vistas, which they call streets, and which, notwithstanding their projecting colonnades, are anything but classical. The scarcity of the women contributes to the dulness of the city. Those who are pretty, seldom appear on foot. Wealthy persons who wish to walk, are invariably followed by a servant. The practice is, here, one of prudence and necessity.
The Emperor alone has the power to people this wearisome abode, abandoned so soon as its master has disappeared. He is the magician who puts thought and motion into the human machines, — a magician in whose presence Russia wakes, and in whose absence she sleeps. After the Court has left, the superb metropolis has ,the appearance of a theatre when the
140CHARACTER OF ТПЕ COURTIERS.
representation is over. Since my return from Peter -hofi? I can scarcely recognise the city I left four days ago; but were the Emperor to return this evening, everything to-morrow would assume its former interest. We should have to become Russians to understand the power of the sovereign's eye ; it is a very different thing from the lover's eye spoken of by La Fontaine. Do you suppose that a young gh`l bestows a thought on her love affairs in the
