presence of the Emperor? Do not deceive yourself; she is occupied with the idea of procuring some promotion for her brother. An old woman, so soon as she breathes the air of the court, feels no longer her infirmities. She may have no family to provide for — no matter, she plays the courtier for the pure love of the game. She is servile without an object, just as others like play for its own sake. Thus, by an endeavour to shake off the burden of years, this wrinkled puppet loses all the dignity of age. We have no pity for busy intriguing decrepitude, because it is ridiculous. At the end of life it is surely time to set about practising the lesson which time is ever teaching, the grand art, namely, of giving up. Happy those who early learn to apply this lesson. To renounce is the great proof of a powerful mind: to abdicate a position before it is lost,—this is the policy of old age.
It is, however, a policy little practised at court, and at that of St. Petersburg less than at any other. Busy, restless old women are the plagues of the court of Russia. The sun of favour dazzles and blinds the ambitious, more especially those of the female sex; it prevents their discerning their true interest, which would be to save their pride by concealing the mi-
CHARACTER OF THE COURTIERS.141
series of their hearts. On the contrary, the Eussian courtiers glory in the abject meanness of their souls. The flatterer here shuffles his cards upon the table, and I am only astonished that he can win anything in a game so palpable to all the world. In the presence of the emperor the asthmatic breathes, the paralysed becomes active, the gouty loses his pain, the lovers no longer burn, the young men no longer seek to amuse themselves, the men of mind no longer think. In lieu of all these human states, mental and physical, one combined sentiment of avarice and vanity animates life even to its latest sigh. These two passions are the breath of all courts; but here they impart to their victims a military emulation, a disciplined rivalry, whose agitating influences extend throughout all the stages of society. To rise a step by more carefully dancing attendance — such is the absorbing thought of this etiquette- instructed crowd.
But then, what prostration of strength, when the luminary in whose beam these flattering motes may be seen to move, is no longer above the horizon ! It is like the evening dew quenching the dust, or the nuns in Kobert le Diable, again repairing to their sepulchres, to wait the signal for another round.
'With this continual stretch of all minds towards advancement, conversation is impossible. The eyes of the Russian courtiers are the sunflowers of the palace. They speak without interesting themselves in anything that is said, and their looks remain all the while fascinated by the sun of favour.
The absence of the emperor does not render conversation more free: he is still present to the mind. The thoughts, instead of the eyes, then become the
• 142
THE TCHINN.
sunflowers. In one word, the emperor is the god, the life, the passion of this unhappy people. Imagine human existence reduced to the hope that an obeisance will procure the acknowledgments of a look ! God has implanted too many passions in the human heart for the uses which are here made of it.
If I put myself in the place of the only man who has here the right to live free, I tremble for him. To have to play the part of Providence over sixty millions of souls is a dreadful office. The Divinity has only the choice of two things: either to destroy his own power by showing himself a man, or to lead his votaries to the conquest of the world, in maintaining his character as a god. It is thus that in Riissia the whole of life becomes nothing more than a school of ambition.
But by what road have the Russians reached this point of self-abnegation ? What human means could produce such a political result ? The cause of all is the
The tchinn is a nation formed into a regiment; it is the military system applied to all classes of society, even to those which never go to war. In short, it is the division of the civil population into ranks, which correspond to ranks in the army. Since this institution has been established, a man who has never seen exercise may obtain the title of colonel.
Peter the Great — it is always to him that we must go back in order to understand the actual state
ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN.143
of Russia — Peter the Great, troubled by certain national prejudices which had a resemblance to aristocracy, and which incommoded him in the execution of his plans, took it into his head one day to discover that the minds of his people were too independent ; and, in order to remedy the evil, this great workman could devise nothing better in his profoundly deep, yet narrow penetration, than to divide the herd, that is to say, the people, into classes, entirely irrelative of name, birth, and family: so that the son of the highest noble in the empire may belong to an inferior class, whilst the son of one of the peasants may rise to the highest classes, if such be the good will of the emperor. Under this division of the people, every man takes his position according to the favour of the prince. Thus it is that Russia has become a regiment of sixty millions strong; and this is the tchinn — the mightiest achievement of Peter the Great.
By its means, that prince freed himself in one day from the fetters of ages. The tyrant, when he undertook to regenerate his people, held sacred neither nature, history, character, nor life. Such sacrifices render great results easy. Peter knew better than any one that, so long as an order of nobility exists in a community, the despotism of one man can be nothing more than a fiction. He therefore said, ' To realise my government I must annihilate the remains of the feudal system ; and the best way of doing this is to make caricatures of gentlemen—to destroy the nobility by rendering it a creation of my own.' It has consecpiently been, if not destroyed, at least nullified by an institution that occupies its place, though
144 DESTRUCTION OF THE ARISTOCRACY.
it does not replace it. There are castes in this social system, in which to enter is to acquire hereditary nobility. Peter the Great, whom I should prefer to call Peter the Strong, forestalling our modern revolutions by more than half a century, thus crushed the spirit of feudalism. Less powerful under him than it was among us, it fell beneath the half civil half military institution which constitutes modern Russia. Peter was endowed with a clear and yet a limited understanding. In rearing his system on so great a ruin, he knew not how to profit by the exorbitant powers he had engrossed, except in mimicking more at his ease the civilisation of Europe.
With the means of action usurped by this prince, a creative genius would have worked much greater miracles. The Russian nation, ascending after all the others upon the great stage of the world, possessed the gift of imitation in lieu of genius, .and had a carpenter's apprentice for its prompter ! Under a chief less fond of miimti?, less attached to details, that nation would have distinguished itself, more tardily, it is true, but more gloriously. Its power, corresponding with its own internal requirements, would have been useful to the world : it is now onl·v astonishing.
The successors of this lawgiver in fustian have, during one hundred years, united with the ambition of subjugating their neighbours, the weakness of copying them. In the present day, the Emperor Nicholas believes the time is arrived when Russia has no longer need of looking for models among foreigners in order to conquer and to rule the world. He is the first really Russian sovereign since
