Will not the reader feel some compassion for a traveller lost in a country where facts are not more conclusive than words ? The fictions of the Russians have upon me an eifect precisely the contrary to that intended: I see at the very outset the design to blind and dazzle me ; I therefore stand upon my guard; and the consequence is, that instead of being the impartial spectator that I should have been but for their vain boasting, I become, in spite of myself, an unfriendly observer.
The governor was also pleased himself to show me the fair; but this time, we made the tour of it rapidly, in a carriage. I admired one point of view that was worthy of forming a panorama. To enjoy the magnificent picture, we ascended the summit of one of the Chinese pavilions, which commands an entire view of the city of a month. I was there more especially struck with the immensity of the piles of wealth annually accumulated on this point of land — a focus of industry the more remarkable, because it is lost, as it were, in the midst of deserts without bounds either to the eye or the imagination.
AT THE FAIR OF NIJNI.215
The governor informs me that the value of the merchandise brought this year to the fair of Nijni exceeds one hundred and fifty millions*, according to the manifestoes of the merchants themselves, who, with the mistrust natural to Orientals, always conceal a part of the value of their stock.
Although all the countries in the world send the tri-bute of their soil and industry to Xijni, the principal importance of this annual market is owing to its being a depot for the provisions, the precious stones, the stuffs, and the furs of Asia. The wealth of the Tartars, the Persians, and the Buchanans, is the object which most strikes the imagination of the strangers attracted by the reputation of the fair ; yet, notwithstanding its commercial importance, I, as merely a curious observer, find it below its reputation. They reply to this, that the Emperor Alexander spoiled its picturesque and amusing aspect. He rendered the streets which separate the stalls more spacious and regular; but such stiffness is dull: besides, everything is gloomy and silent in Russia; everywhere the reciprocal distrust of government and people banishes mirth. Every passion and every pleasure has to answer for its consequences to some rigid confessor, disguised as an agent of police; every Russian is a school-boy liable to the rod; all Riissia is a vast college, where discipline is enforced by severe and rigid rule, until constraint and ennui, becoming insupportable, occasion here and there an outbreak. When this takes place, it is a regular
* The author does not state whether these are francs or roubles. —
216 FRENCHMEN OF THE NEW SCHOOL.
political saturnalia; but, once again, the acts of violence are isolated, and do not disturb the general quiet. That quiet is the more stable, and appears the more firmly established, because it resembles death: it is only living things that can be exterminated. In Russia, respect for despotism is confounded with the idea of eternity.
I find several Frenchmen assembled together at Nijni. Notwithstanding my passionate love for France, for that land which, in my vexation with the extravagancies of its inhabitants, I have so often abandoned with the vow never to return, but to which I return always, and where I hope to die, — notwithstanding this blind patriotism, I have never ceased, since I first travelled and encountered in foreign lands a crowd of countrymen, to recognise the impertinence of the young French, and to feel astonished on observing the strong relief in which our faults stand forth among foreigners. If I speak only of the younger men, it is because at their age the stamp upon the mind, being less worn away by the rubs of life, the exhibition of character is the more striking. It must then be owned that our young countrymen invite a laugh at their own expense, by the sincerity with which they imagine that they dazzle the simple men of other nations. French superiority, a superiority so well established in their eyes that it does not require even to be proved, is the axiom upon which they support themselves. This unshaking faith in their own personal merit, this self-love, so completely at ease, that it would become ingenuous through its very confidence, if so much credulity did not generally unite itself, in hideous combination, with scoffing and
FRENCHMEN OP THE NEW SCHOOL. 217
sneering self-sufficiency ; this knowledge, for the most part devoid of imagination, which turns the intellect into a storehouse of facts and dates, more or less well classed, but always cited with a dryness which robs truth of its value, for without heart, a man cannot be truthful, he can only be exact; this continual look-out of that advance- guard of conversation, vanity, reconnoitring each thought of others, expressed or not expressed, in order to extract from it advantage ; this forgetfulness of others, carried to the point of unknowingly insulting them through not perceiving that the high opinion a person entertains of himself is lowering to the rest; this total absence of sensibility, which only serves to increase susceptibility, evinced by bitter hostility elevated into a patriotic duty, by a constant liability to be offended at some preference of which another may be the object, or at some correction, however useful the lesson given ; — in short, all this infatuation, serving as the buckler of folly against truth, with many other traits, which some of my readers will supply better than I can, appears to me to characterise the present race of young Frenchmen, from ten years old and upwards, for that is the age at which they become men in these days.
Such characters injure our position among foreigners ; they have little influence in Paris, where the number of models of this species of impertinence is so great as to attract no attention, where they are lost in a crowd like themselves, just as instruments drown each other in an orehcstre: but when they become isolated, and placed in the midst of a society whei`e reign passions and habits of mind different from those which agitate the French world, they
VOL. III.L
218 AN AGREEABLE RENCONTRE.
exhibit themselves in a manner that would drive to despair a traveller as attached to his country as I am. Imagine, then, my joy on finding here, at the
governor's dinner-table, M., one among living
men the most capable of giving a favourable idea of young France to foreigners. In truth, he belongs to old France by his family; and it is to the mixture of new ideas with ancient traditions that he owes the elegance of manners and the justness of views which distinguish him. He has seen well, and describes well what he has seen ; he does not think more of himself than others think, and perhaps even a little less; and he therefore greatly edified and amused me, after leaving the table, by the recital of all that he has daily learnt since his stay in Russia. Dupe of a coquette in Petersburg, he consoles himself for his mistake by studying the land with redoubled attention. His mind is clear, he observes carefully, and recounts with exactness ; which does not prevent him from listening to others, nor even — and this recalls the memory of the flourishing days of French society — from inspiring them with the wish to talk. In conversing with him we fall into an illusion ; we believe that conversation is always an interchange of ideas, that refined society is still founded among us upon the relations of reciprocal pleasures : in short, we forget the invasion that brutal, unmasked egotism has· made on our modern saloons, and fancy that social life is, as formerly, a commerce beneficial to all, — an old-fashioned error, which dissipates on the first reflection, and leaves us conscious of the melancholy reality, the pillage of ideas, and of
