Ave shall have to stoop to it, if our extravagances and iniquities render us worthy of the punishment.
The reader must not expect from me a complete account of Russia. I neglect to speak of many celebrated things because they make little impression upon me. I wish only to describe that which strikes or interests me. Nomenclatures and catalogues disgust me with travels, and there are plenty of them without my adding to the list.
Nothing can be seen here without ceremony and и 3
150RUSSIAN HOSPITALITY.
preparation. Russian hospitality is so edged round with formalities as to render life unpleasant to the most favoured strangers. It is a civil pretext for restraining the movements of the traveller, and for limiting the freedom of his observations. Owing to the fastidious politeness exercised in doing the honours of the land, the observer can inspect nothing without a guide: never being alone, he has the greater difficulty informing his judgment upon his own spontaneous impressions; and this is what is desired. To enter Russia you must, with your passport, deposit also your right of opinion on the frontier. Would you see the curiosities of a palace, they give you a chamberlain, with whom you are obliged to view every thing, and, indiscriminately, to admire all that he admires. Would you survey a camp — an officer, sometimes a general officer, accompanies you: if it be an hospital, the head surgeon escorts you; a fortress, the governor, in person, shows it, or rather politely conceals it from you ; a school, or any other public institution, the director or the inspector must be previously apprised of your visit, and you find him, under arms, prepared to brave your examination; if an edifice, the architect himself leads you over the whole building, and explains to you all that you do not care to know, in order to avoid informing you on points which you would take interest in knowing.
All this oriental ceremony leads people to renounce seeing many things were it only to avoid the trouble of soliciting admissions : this is the first advantage gained ! But if curiosity is hardy enough to persist in importuning official personages, it is at least so carefully watched in its perquisitions, that they end
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151
in nothing. You must communicate officially with the heads of the so called public establishments, and you obtain no other permission than that of expressing before the legitimate authorities the admiration which politeness, prudence, and a gratitude of which the Russians are very jealous, demand. They refuse you nothing, but they accompany you every where : politeness becomes a pretext for maintaining a watch over you.
In this manner they tyrannise over us in pretending to do us honour. Such is the fate of privileged travellers. As to those who are not privileged, they see nothing at all. The country is so organised that without the immediate intervention of official persons no stranger can move about agreeably, or even safely. In all this, will be recognised the manners and the policy of the East, disguised under European urbanity. Such alliance of the East and the West, the results of which are discoverable at every step, is the grand characteristic of the Russian empire.
A semi-civilisation is always marked by formalities; refined civilisation dispenses with them, just as perfect good breeding banishes affectation.
The Russians are still persuaded of the efficaciousness of falsehood; and such illusion on the part of a people so well acquainted with it, amazes me. It is not that they lack quick perception, but in a land where the governors do not yet understand the advantages of liberty, even for themselves, the governed naturally shrink from the immediate inconveniences of truth. One is momentarily obliged to repeat that the people here, great and small, resemble the Greeks of the Lower Empire.
152 RESEMBLANCE OF RUSSIANS TO CHINESE.
I am perhaps not sufficiently grateful for the attentions which these people affect to lavish upon strangers who are at all known ; but I cannot help seeing below the surface, and I feel, in spite of myself, that all their eagerness demonstrates less benevolence than it betrays inquietude.
They wish, in accordance with the judicious precept of Monomaque, that the foreigner should leave their country contented.* It is not that the real country cares what is said or thought of it
If I look farther, I perceive under the veil with which they seek to cloke every object, a love of mystery for its own sake. Here reserve is the order of the day, just as imprudence is in Paris. In Russia, secrecy presides over eveiy thing ; a silence that is superfluous insures the silence that is necessary; in short, the people are Chinese disguised; they do not like to avow their aversion to foreign observation, but if they dared to brave the reproach of barbarism as the true Chinese do, access to Petersburg would be as difficult for us as is the access to Pekin.
My reasons for wearying of Russian hospitality will be now seen. Of all species of constraint, the most insupportable to me is that of which I have not the right to complain. The gratitude I feel for the attentions of which I am here the object, is like that of a soldier's — made to serve by compulsion. As a traveller who specially piques himself on his independence, I feel that I am passing under the yoke ; they trouble themselves unceasingly to discipline my * See the motto in the title-page.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RUSSIANS AND FRENCH. 153
ideas, and every evening on returning to my quarters, I have to examine my thoughts to ascertain what rank they bear, and in what uniform they are clothed.
Having carefully avoided intimacy with many great lords, I have hitherto seen nothing thoroughly except the court. My wish has been to preserve my position as an independent and impartial judge; and I feared to incur accusations of ingratitude or want of good faith; above all, I feared to render subjects of the country responsible for my particular opinions. But at the court I have passed in review all the characteristics of society.
An affectation of French manners, without any of the tone of French conversation, first struck me. It conceals a caustic, sarcastic, Russian spirit of ridicule. If I remained here any time, I would tear away the mask from these puppets, for I am weary of seeing them copy French grimaces. At my age, a man hat· nothing more to learn from affectation; truth alone can always interest, because it imparts knowledge ; truth alone is always new.
I observed from the very first, that the Russians of the lower classes, who are suspicious by nature, detest foreigners through ignorance and national prejudice ; I have observed since, that the Russians of the higher classes, who are equally suspicious, fear them because they believe them hostile: ' the French and the English are persuaded of their superiority over all other people ;' this motive suffices to make a Russian hate foreigners, on the same principle that, in France, the Provincial distrusts the Parisian. A barbarian jealousy, an envy, puerile, but impossible to disarm, „ influences the greater
154
RUSSIAN HONESTY.
