Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

theatre: I do not put much faith in the pleasure which they assume the appearance of feeling on seeing the representations of French comedies; they have so fine a tact that they guess the fashion before it is proclaimed to them; this spares them the humiliation of owning that they follow it. The delicacy of their ear, and the varied inflections of the vowels, the multiplicity of the consonants, the numerous hissing sounds in which they are exercised in speaking their own tongue, accustom them from infancy to master all the difficulties of pronunciation. Those, even, who only know a few words of French, pronounce them as we do. This often deceives us : we imagine that they understand our language as well as they speak it, which is a great error. The small number who have travelled, or have been born in a rauk where education is necessarily carefully directed, alone understand the niceties of Parisian intellectual conversation. Our delicate strokes of wit are lost on the mass. TVe distrust other foreigners, because their accent of our language is disagreeable, and appears to us ridiculous; and yet, notwithstanding the labour with which they speak it, they understand us better and less superficially than

A RUSSIAN IX HIS LIBRARY.101

the Russians, whose soft and imperceptible cant'aene at first deceives us. As soon as they begin to talk carelessly, to relate a story, or to minutely describe a personal impression, the illusion ceases and the deception is discovered. But they are the cleverest people in the world for concealing their deficiencies: in intimate society this diplomatic talent is wearisome.

A Russian showed me yesterday, in his cabinet, a little portable library, which struck me as a model of good taste. I approached the collection to open a volume the appearance of which had attracted me ; it was an Arabic manuscript, bound in old parchment. ' You arc greatly to be envied; you understand Arabic?' I said to the master of the house. ' No,' he answered; ' but I always have every kind of book around me: it sets off a room, yon know.'

Scarcely had this ingenuous confession escaped him than the involuntary expression of my face caused him to perceive that he had forgotten himself; whereupon, feeling very sure of my ignorance, he set about translating to me a few pretended passages of the manuscript, and did it with a volubility, a fluency, and an address, which would have deceived me, had not his previous dissimulation, and the embarrassment which he betrayed on my first perceiving it, put me on my guard. I clearly saw that he wished to obliterate the effect of his frank avowal, and to impress me with the idea, without his actually stating it, that in making such confession he had only been joking. The artifice, skilful as it was, failed in its object.

These are the childish stratagems of a people whose f 3

102

THE TARANDASSE.

restless self-love urges them to a rivalry with the civilisation of more ancient nations.

There is no kind of artifice or falsehood of which their devouring vanity is not capable, in the hope that we shall be induced to say, on returning to our several countries, ' It is a great mistake to call those people the barbarians of the north.' This appellation is never out of their heads; they remind strangers of it on every occasion with an ironical humility; and they do not perceive that their very susceptibility on the point furnishes their detractors with arms against them.

I have hired one of the carriages of the country to travel in to Nijni, in order to save my own : but this species of tarandasse on springs* is scarcely more substantial than my caleche. This was the remark of a person who has just been to aid me in expediting my departure. 'You alarm me,:'I replied; 'fori am tired of breaking down at every stage.'

' For a long journey I should advise you to get another, if, at least, one could be found in Moscow at the present season : but the trip is so short that this will serve your purpose.'

This short trip, including the return, and the detour that I propose making by Troitza and Yarowslaw, is one of four hundred leagues, of which I am told 150 are detestable roads, with logs and stumps of trees buried in the mud, deep sands full of loose stones, &c. &c. By the manner in which the Russians

* The real tarandasse is the body of a ealeehe placed, without springs, on two shafts, which join together the axletrees of the front and hind wheels.

NOBLE TRAIT IN RUSSIAN CHARACTER. 103

speak of distances, it is easy to perceive they inhabit a land large as Europe, and of which Siberia is a part.

One of the most attractive traits in their character, at least in my opinion, is their dislike to objections: they will recognise neither difficulties nor obstacles.

The common people participate in this, it may be, a little gasconading humour, of the nobility. With his hatchet, which he never lays aside, a Russian peasant triumphs over accidents and predicaments that would altogether stop the villagers of our provinces ; and he answers ' yes,' to everything that is demanded of him.

F 4

104ROADS IN THE INTERIOR.

CHAP. XXX*.

ROADS IN THE INTERIOR. — FARMS AND COUNTRY MANSIONS. —

MONOTONY THE GREAT CHARACTERISTIC OF THE LAND. PAS

TORAL LIFE OF THE PEASANTS.BEAUTY OF THE WOMEN AND

OLD MEN. POLICY ATTRIBUTED TO THE POLES. A NIGHT AT

THE CONVENT OF TROITZA.PESTALOZZI ON PERSONAL CLEAN

LINESS. INTERIOR OF THE CONVENT. PILGRIMS. — SAINT

SERGIUS. — HISTORY OF THE CONVENT.ITS TOMBS AND TREA

SURES. INCONVENIENCES OF A JOURNEY IN RUSSIA. BAD

QUALITY OF THE WATER. WANT OF PROBITY A NATIONAL

CHARACTERISTIC.

If we are to believe the Russians, all their roads are good during the summer season, even those that are not the great highways. I find them all bad. A road full of inequalities, sometimes as broad as a field, sometimes extremely narrow, passes through beds of sand in which the horses plunge above their knees, lose their wind, break their traces, and refuse to draw at every twenty yards; if these are passed, you soon plunge into pools of mud which conceal large stones and enormous stumps of trees, that are very destructive to the carriages. Such are the roads of this country, except during seasons when they become absolutely impassable, when the extreme of cold renders travelling dangerous, when storms of snow bury the country, or when floods, produced

* Written at the convent of Troitza, twenty leagues from Moscow, 17th of August.

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by the thaw, transform, for about three months in the year, the low plains into lakes; namely for about six weeks after summer, and for as many after the winter season ; the rest of the year they continue marshes. The landscape remains the same. The villages still present the same double line of small wood houses, more or less ornamented with painted earvings, with their gable always facing the street, and flanked with a kind of enclosed