touching. The vice of the nation becomes the virtue of the individual.
The plaintive sadness of the Russian songs strikes every foreigner; but this music is not only melancholy, it is also scientific and complicated : it is composed of inspired melodies; and, at the same time, of harmonious combinations exceedingly abstruse, and that are not elsewhere attained except by study and calculation. Often, in travelling through villages, I
RUSSIAN MUSIC.
169
stop to listen to pieces executed by several voices with a precision, and a musical instinct, that I am never tired of admiring. The performers, in these rustic cµiintetti, guess, by intuition, the laws of counterpoint, the rules of composition, the principles of harmony, the effects of the different kinds of voice, and they disdain singing in unison. They execute series of concords, elaborate, unexpected, and interspersed with shakes, and delicate ornaments, which, if not always perfectly correct, are very superior to the national melodies heard in other lands.
The song of the Russian peasants is a nasal lamentation, not very agreeable when executed by one voice; but when sung in chorus, these complaints assume a grave, religious character, and produce effects of harmony that are surprising. I had supposed the Russian music to have been brought from Byzantium, but I am assured that it is indigenous : this will explain the profound melancholy of the airs, especially of those which affect gaiety by their vivacity of movement. If the Russians do not know how to revolt against oppression, they know how to sigh and groan under it,
Were I in the place of the emperor, I should not be content with forbidding my subjects to complain; I should also forbid them to sing, which is a disguised mode of complaining. These accents of lament are avowals, and may become accusations : so true it is that the arts themselves, under despotism, are not innocent; they are indirect protestations.
Hence, no doubt, the taste of the government and the courtiers for the works, literary or artistical, of foreigners: borrowed poetry has no roots. Among
VOL. III.I
170
THE ROAD TO SIBERIA.
a people of slaves, when patriotic sentiments produce profound emotions, they are dreaded: everything that is national, including even music, becomes a means of opposition.
It is so in Russia, where, from the corners of the farthest deserts, the voice of man lifts to heaven vengeful complaints; demanding from God the portion of happiness that is refused him upon earth. Nothing more strikingly reveals the habitual sufferings of the people than the mournfulness of their pleasures. The Russians have consolations, but no enjoyments. I am surprised that no one before me should have warned the government of its imprudence in allowing the people an amusement which betrays their misery and their resignation. He who is powerful enough to oppress men should, for consistency's sake, forbid them to sing.
I am now at the last stage on the road to Nijni. `We have arrived on three wheels, and dragging a prop of wood in the place of the foiu`th.
A great part of the road from Yaroslaf to Nijni is a long garden avenue, traced almost always in a straight line, broader than the great avenue in our Champs-Elysees at Paris, and flanked on either side by two smaller alleys, carpeted with turf and shaded by birch-trees. The road is easy, for they drive nearly always upon the grass, except when crossing marshes by means of elastic bridges, a kind of floating floors, more cmious than safe either for the carriages or the horses. A road on which grows so much grass can be little frequented, and is therefore the more easily kept
Л PICTURE OF RUSSIA.171
iu repair. Yesterday, before we broke down, I was praising tins road, which we were travelling at full gallop, to my feldjager. '
These words chilled me through. It is for my pleasure, I said to myself, that I travel this road : but what have been the thoughts and feelings of the many unfortunate beings who have travelled it before me ? These thoughts and feelings, evoked by the imagination, took possession of my mind. Siberia ! — that Kussian hell, is, with all its phantoms, incessantly before me. It has upon me the effect that the eye of the basilisk has upon the fascinated bird.
What a country is this ! a plain without limit and without colour ; with only here and there some few inec [iialities in the surface, a few fields of oats and rye, a few scattered birch and pine woods in the distance, villages built of gray boards along the lines of road, on rather more elevated sites, at every twenty, thirty, or fifty leagues, towns the vast size of which swallows up the inhabitants, and immense, colourless rivers, dull as the heavens they reflect! Winter and death are felt to be hovering over these scenes, giving to every object a funereal hue: the terrified traveller, at the end of a few wTeeks, feels himself buried alive, and, stifling, struggles to burst his coffin- lid, that leaden veil that separates him from the living.
Do not go to the north to amuse yourselves, unless i 2
172
EXILES
at least you seek your amusement in study; for there is much here to study.
I was, then, travelling upon the great road to Siberia, when I saw in the distance a group of armed men, who had stopped under one of the side alleys of the road.
' 'What are those soldiers doing there ?' I asked my courier.
' They are eossaeks,' he replied, ' conducting
exiles to Siberia! '
It is not, then, a dream, it is not the mythology of the gazettes ; I see there the real, unhappy beings, the actual exiles, proceeding wearily on foot to seek the land where they must die forgotten by the world, far from all that is dear to them, alone with the God who never created them for such a fate. Perhaps I have met, or shall meet, their wives or mothers: for they are not criminals; on the contrary, they are Poles—the heroes of misfortune and devotion. Tears came into my eyes as I approached these unhappy men, near to whom I dared not even stop lest I should be suspected by my Argus. Alas ! before such sufferings the sentiment of my impotent compassion humiliates me, and anger rises above commiseration in my heart, I could wish to be far away from a country where the miserable creature who acts as my courier can become formidable enough to compel me, in his presence, to dissimulate the most natural feelings of my heart. In vain do I repeat to myself that, perhaps, our convicts are still
