assistance; they made me alight, and helped my people to hold the still trembling horses. Never was an accident more nearly being disastrous, and never was one repaired at less cost. Not a screw of the coach was disturbed, and scarcely a strap of harness. broken.
At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, Antonio was seated quietly by my side in the caleche; in
260
RETURN TO MOSCOW.
another ten minutes, he was as fast asleep as if he had not been the means of savins; all our lives.
While they put the harness in order, I approached the cause of all this mischief. The groom of the elephant had prudently led him into the wood adjoining one of the side-alleys of the road. The formidable beast appeared to me yet larger after the peril to which he had exposed me. His trunk, busy in the top of the bireh-trees, reminded me of a boa twisted among the palms. I began to make excuses for my horses, and left him, giving thanks to God for having escaped a death which at one moment appeared to me inevitable.
I am now at Moscow. An excessive heat has not ceased to reign there for several months; I find again the same temperature that I left: the summer is indeed quite extraordinary. The drought sends up into the air, above the most populous quarters of the city, a reddish dust, which, towards evening, produces effects as fantastical as the Bengal lights. This even-ing, at sunset, I contemplated the spectacle from the Kremlin, the survey of which I have made with as much admiration, and almost as much surprise, as I did at first.
The city of men was separated from the palace of giants, by a glory like one of Corregio's: the whole was a sublime union of the marvels of painting and poetry.
The Kremlin, as the loftiest point in the picture, received on its breast the last streaks of day, while the mists of night had already enveloped the rest of
A FAREAVELL TO THE KUEMLIN.2G1
the city. The imagination owned no bounds; the universe, the infinite Deity itself, seemed to be grasped by the witness of the majestic spectacle. It was the living model of Martin's most extraordinary paintings. My heart beat with fear and admiration: I saw the whole cohort of the supernatural inmates of the fortress; their forms shone like demons painted on a ground of gold ; they moved glittering towards the regions of night, from which they seemed about to tear off the veil; I expected to hear the thunder: it was fearfully beautiful.
The white and irregular masses of the palace reflected unequally the oblicµiely-borne beams of a flickering twilight. This variety of shades was the effect of the different degrees of inclination of different walls, and of the projections and recesses which constitute the beauty of the barbaric architecture, whose bold caprices, if they do not charm the taste, speak impressively to the imagination. It was so astonishing, so beautiful, that I have not been able to resist once more naming the Kremlin.
But let not the reader be alarmed —this is an adieu.
The plaintive song of some workmen, echoing from vault to vault, from battlement to battlement, from precipice to precipice — precipices built by man — penetrated to my heart, which was absorbed in inexpressible melancholy. 'Wandering lights appeared in the depths of the royal edifice; and along the deserted galleries, and empty barbicans, came the voice of man, which I was astonished to hear at that hour among these solitary palaces ; as was likewise the bird of night, who, disturbed in his mysterious loves, fled from the light of the torches, and, seeking refuge
262 EFFECT OF THE EMPEROR'S PRESENCE.
among the highest steeples and towers, there spread the news of the unusual disorder.
That disorder was the consequence of the works commanded by the emperor to welcome his own approaching arrival: he fetes himself, and illuminates his Kremlin when he comes to Moscow. Meantime, as the darkness increased, the city brightened: its illuminated streets, shops, coffee-houses, and theatres, rose out of the dark like magic. The day was also the anniversary of the emperor's coronation—another motive for illuminating. The Russians have so many joyful days to celebrate that, were I in their place, I should never put out my lamps.
The approach of the magician has already begun to be felt. Three weeks ago Moscow was only inhabited by merchants, who proceeded about their business in drowskas: now, noble coursers, splendid equipages, gilded uniforms, great lords, and numerous valets, enliven the streets and obstruct the porticos. ' The emperor is thirty leagues off: who knows if he will not be here to-morrow, or perhaps to-night ? It is said he was here yesterday, incognito: who can prove that he is not here now ? ' And this doubt, this hope, animates all hearts; it changes the faces and languages of all persons, and the aspect of every thing. Moscow, the merchant-city, is now as much troubled and agitated as a citizen's wife expecting the visit of a great nobleman. Deserted palaces and gardens are re-opened; flowers and torches vie with each other in brilliancy ; flattering speeches begin to murmur through the crowd: I fear lest I myself should catch the influence of the illusion, if not
MILITARY FETE AT BORODINO.263
through selfish motives, at least from a love of the marvellous.
An Emperor of Russia at Moscow, is a king of Assyria in Babylon.
His presence is at this moment, they say, working miracles at Borodino. An entire city is there created — a city just sprung out of the desert, and destined to endure for a week : even gardens have been planted there round a palace; the trees, destined soon to die, have been brought from a distance at great expense, and are so placed as to represent anticpie shades. The llussians, though they have no past, are, like all enlightened
The programme of the fete is the exact repetition of the battle, which we called Moskowa, and which the Russians have christened Borodino. Wishing to approach as nearly as possible to the reality, they have convoked from the most distant parts of the empire, all the surviving veterans of 1812 who were in the action. The reader may imagine the astonishment and distress of these brave men, suddenly torn from their repose, and obliged to repair from the extremities of Siberia, Kamtschatka, Lapland, the Caspian, or the Caucasus, to a theatre which they are told was the theatre of their glory — not their fortune, but their renown, a miserable recompence for a superhuman devotion. Why revive these questions and
264 author's motive for not attending.
recollections ? Why this bold evocation of so many mute and forgotten spectres ? It is the last judgment of the conscripts of 1812. If they wished to make a satire upon military life, they could not take a better course: it лгав thus that Holbein, iu his Dance of Death, caricatured human life. Numbers of these men, awakened out of their sleep on the brink of their graves, have not mounted a horse for many years ; and here they are obliged, in order to please a master whom they have never seen, again to play over their long-forgotten parts. They have so much dread of not satisfying the expectations of the capricious sovereign who thus troubles their old age, that they say the representation of the battle is more terrible to them than was the reality. This useless ceremony, this fanciful
