attempting to delineate with too finely drawn strokes; these are delicacies in the shading which must be felt. AVe may divine them, but wc must avoid attempting to fix by words their too elusive forms. Let it suffice that all these, and many other graces, are found in the manners and conversation of the really elegant Russians, and more frequently, more com-
70SEDUCTIVE MANNERS OF
pletely, among those who have not travelled, but who, remaining in Russia, have nevertheless been in contact with distinguished foreigners.
These charms, these illusions, give them a sovereign power over hearts: so long as you remain in the presence of the privileged beings, you are under a spell; and the charm is double, for, such is their triumph, that you imagine yourself to be to them what they are to you. Time and the world, engagements and affairs, are forgotten ; the duties of society are abolished; one single interest remains — the interest of the moment; one single person survives— the person present, who is always the person liked. The desire of pleasing, carried to this excess, infallibly succeeds: it is the sublime of good taste ; it is eleganee the most refined, and yet as natural as an instinct. This supreme amiability is not assumed or artificial, it is a gift which needs only to be exercised : to prolong the illusion you have but to prolong your stay. The Russians are the best actors in the world: to produce an effect, they need none of the accompaniments of scenery.
Every traveller has reproached them with their versatility; the reproach is but too well founded: you feel yourself forgotten in bidding them adieu. I attribute this, not only to levity of character, to inconstancy of heart, but also to the want of solid and extended information. They like you to leave them ; for they fear lest they should be discovered when they allow themselves to be approached for too long a time uninterruptedly. Thence arises the fondness and the indifference which follow each other so rapidly among them. This apparent inconstancy is
THE RUSSIANS.
71
only a precaution of vanity, well understood and sufficiently common among people of the fashionable world in every land. It is not their faults that people conceal with the greatest care, it is their emptiness; they do not blush to be perverse, but they arc humbled at being insignificant. In accordance with this principle, the Russians of the higher classes willingly exhibit every thing in their minds and character likely to please at first sight, and which keeps up conversation for a few hours: but if you endeavour to go behind the decorated scene that thus dazzles you, they stop you as they would a rash intruder, who might take it into his head to 2`0 behind the screen of their bedchambers, of which the elegance is entirely confined to the outer side of the division. They give you a reception dictated by curiosity; they afterwards repel you through prudence.
This applies to friendship as well as to love, to the society of men as well as to that of women. In giving the portrait of a Russian, we paint the nation, just as a soldier under arms conveys the idea of all his regiment. Nowhere is the influence of unity in the government and in education so sensibly visible as here. Every mind wears its uniform. Alas! how greatly must those suffer, be they even no longer young and sensitive, who bring among this people — cold-hearted and keen-witted both by nature and social education — the simplicity of other lands ! I picture to myself the sensibility of the Germans, the confiding
* La Constance des Espagnols, la passion des Anglais.
72LIBERTINISM IN MOSCOW.
the
These same people, so naturally amiable, so well endowed, so extremely agreeable, sometimes go astray in patl)? which men of the coarsest characters would avoid.
It is impossible to picture to one's self the life of many of the most distinguished young persons of Moscow. These men, who bear names and belong to families known throughout Europe, are lost in excesses that will not bear to be described. It is inconceivable how they can resist for six months the system they adopt for life, and maintain with a constancy which would be worthy of heaven, if its object were virtuous. Their temperaments seem to be made expressly for the anticipated hell; — for it is
CONSEQUENCES OF DESPOTISM.73
thus that I qualify the life of a professed debauchee in Moscow.
In physical respects, the climate, and in moral respects, the government of this land devour all that is weak in its germ : all that is not robust or stupid dies early, none survive but the debased, and natures strong in good as in evil. Russia is the land of unbridled passions or of passive characters, of rebels or of automata, of conspirators or of machines. There is here nothing intermediate between the tv-rant and the slave, between the madman and the animal:
Notwithstanding the contrasts which I here point out, all resemble each other in one respect — all have levity of character. Among these men of the moment, the projects of the evening are constantly lost in the forgetfulness of the morrow. It may be said, that with them the heart is the empire of chance ; nothing can stand against their propensity to embrace and to abandon. They live and die without perceiving the serious side of existence. Neither good nor evil with them possesses any reality: they can cry, but they cannot be unhappy. Palaces, mountains, giants, sylphs, passions, solitude, brilliant crowds, supreme happiness, unbounded grief, —but it is useless to enumerate : a quarter of an hour's conversation with them suffices to bring before your eyes the whole universe. Their prompt and contemptuous glance surveys, without admiring any thing, the monuments raised by human intelligence during centuries. They fancy they can place themselves above every thing, because they de-
YOL. III.E
74
MORAL LICENCE IN LIEU
spise every thing. Their very praises are insults: they eulogise like people who envy; they prostrate themselves, but always unwillingly, before the objects they believe to be the idols of fashion. But at the first breath
