to punish. Pardon might be a dangerous example to a people who are still so rude in the depths of their hearts. The prince lowers himself to the level of his savage subjects; he hardens himself with them ; he does not fear to brutalise them in order to attach them : people and sovereign emulate each other in deceptions, prejudices, and inhumanity. Abominable combination of barbarism and weakness, interchange of ferocity, <'ireulation of falsehood whieh warms the life of a monster ! — a cadaverous body whose blood is poison. Such is despotism in its essence and its aetion.
The husband and wife have lived for fourteen years by the side, so to speak, of the Uralian mines ; for the arms of a labourer like the prince are little suited to the work of the piek-axe. He is there for the sake of being there, and that is all: but he is a con-
THE UEALIAN MIXES.
221
vict, and -we shall soon see to what this condition condemns a man —
There is no lack of good Russians in Petersburg, and I have met some, who view the life of the convicts at the mines as very bearable, and who complain of the exaggeration with which the
However great may be the luxuries of life in Siberia, the health of the Princess Troubetzkoi is injured by her sojourn at the mines. It is difficult to understand how a woman accustomed to all the delicacies of life in the highest ranks of a luxurious capital, has been able to support so long the privations of every kind to which she has voluntarily submitted. She wished to live, she did live — she even gave life; she reared her offspring under a zone where the length and the rigour of winter seem to us inimical to existence. The thermometer falls there, yearly, to a temperature that might alone suffice to destroy the human race. But this saint-like woman had other cares to think of.
At the conclusion of seven years of exile, as she saw her infants growing around her, she thought it her duty to write to one of her family to beg that they would humbly supplicate the Emperor to suffer them to be sent to Petersburg, or to some other l 3
222MERCY OF THE EMPEROR.
civilised city, in order to receive a suitable education.
The petition was laid at the feet of the Czar, and the worthy successor of the Ivans and of Peter I. answered that the children of a convict, — convicts themselves, would always be sufficiently learned!
After this answer, the family — the mother and the condemned man, — were silent for seven more weary years. Humanity, honour, Christian charity, outraged religion, alone pleaded in their favour ; but this was done silently : not a voice was raised to appeal against such
The prince has completed his term of labour in the mines, and now the exiles, liberated, as they call it, are condemned to form, they and their young family, a colony in the most remote corner of the desert. The locality of their new residence,
It will be easily understood that the condition of the princess (I name her only) is more wretched since she has been permitted to inhabit this solitude. It should be observed that in the language of the oppressed, as interpreted by the oppressor, permissions are obligatory. At the mines, she could find warmth in the bosom of the earth, her family had companions in misfortune, silent consolers, admiring witnesses of her heroism. The human eye contemplated and respectfully deplored her martyrdom, a circum-
COLONISATION IN SIBERIA.223
stance which, externally, rendered it the more sublime. Hearts beat in her presence,—in short, without even having to speak, she felt herself in society; for let governments do their worst, pity will still spring to life wherever there are men. But what hope can there be of awakening the sympathy of bears, or of melting eternal ices amid impenetrable woods, or marshes that have no bounds? What means can there be found of excluding the mortal cold from a hovel ? — and how is subsistence for five children to be obtained a hundred leagues, perhaps more, from any hiunan abode, unless it be that of the superintendant oi the colonies?—fortius is called colonising in Siberia!
What I admire as much as the resignation of the princess, is the eloquence, the ingenious tenderness she must have possessed, to overcome the resistance of her husband, and to succeed in persuading him that she was less to be pitied in suffering with him than she would be in Petersburg, surrounded with all the comforts and elegances of life. This triumph of devotion recompensed by success, for her husband finally consented, I view as a miracle of delicacy, of energy, and of sensibility. To know how to sacrifice self is as noble as it is rare, — to know how to accept such a sacrifice, is sublime.
At present this father and mother, abandoned in the desert, without physical powers, stript of every aid, lost to their fellow men, punished in their children, whose innocence only serves to aggravate their anguish, know not how to provide food for themselves and their little ones. These young convicts by birth, these pariahs of the imperial realm, if they have no longer a country, no longer a position in t?e commu-L 4
224A MOTHER'S ANGUISH.
nity, have yet bodies that need food and raiment. A mother, whatever dignity, whatever elevation of soul she may possess, could she see the fruit of her body perish rather than supplicate a pardon ? USTo; she again humbled herself, and this time it was not through Christian virtue : the lofty woman was conquered by the despairing mother. She saw her children ill, and had nothing wherewith to administer to their wants. In this extreme misery, her husband, his heart withered by his misfortune, left her to act according to her impulse, and the princess wrote a second letter from her hut of exile. The letter was addressed to her family, but meant for the Emperor. This was to place herself at the feet of her enemy, to forget what she owed to herself; but who would think the less of her for doing so ? God calls his elect to every species of sacrifice, even to the sacrifice of the most legitimate pride. The man who would understand life without recognising eternity, can only have seen the things of this world on their sunny side : he must have lived on illusions, as they would have me do in Russia. The letter of the princess has reached its destination, the Emperor has read it; and it was to communicate to me this letter that I was stopped at the moment of my departure. I cannot regret the delay. I have never read anything more simple and touching. Actions like the writer's can dispense with words; she uses her privileges as a heroine, and is laconic, even in imploring the life of her children. In a few lines, she states her situation, without declamation and without complaint; she concludes by imploring this single favour — the permission to live within reach of an apothecary, in order to be able to get
