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

principles, a word from him, saying merely that he knew the prisoner, would suffice to exile the latter to the farther end of the world. He concluded by saying, ' You are neither his relation nor his friend ; you only take in him the interest that you believe you ought to take in a countryman, in a man whom you know to be in trouble; you have already acquitted yourself of the duty that this praiseworthy sentiment imposes on you ; you have spoken to your consul: you had now, believe me, better abstain from any further steps; it will do no good, and you will compromise yourself for the man whose defence you gratuitously undertake. He does not know you, he expects nothing from you; continue, then, your journey, you will disappoint no hopes that he has conceived ; I will keep my eye on him ; I cannot appear in the affair, but I have indirect means which may be useful, and I promise to employ them to the utmost of my power. Once again, then, follow my advice, and pursue your journey.'

' If I wTere to set out,' I exclaimed, ' I should not have a moment's peace ; I should be pursued by a feeling that would amount to remorse, when I recollected that the unfortunate man has me only to befriend him, and that I have abandoned him without doing any thing.'

i( Your presence here,' he answered, ' will not even serve to console him, as he is and must continue wholly ignorant of the interest you take in him.'

278ADVICE OF A RUSSIAN.

' There are, then, no means of gaining access to the dungeon ?'

' ]STone,' replied the individual addressed, not without some marks of impatience at my thus persisting. ' Vere you his brother you could do no more for him here than you have done. Your presence at Petersburg may, on the contrary, be useful to M. Pernet. You can inform the French ambassador all that you know about this imprisonment; for I doubt whether he will hear any thing of it from your consul. A representation made to the minister by a personage in the position of your ambassador, and by a man possessing the character of M. de Barante, will do more to hasten the deliverance of your countryman than you, and I, and any twenty others could do in Moscow.'

' But the emperor and his ministers are at Borodino or at Moscow,' I answered, unwilling to take a refusal.

' All the ministers have not followed his Majesty,' he replied, still in a polite tone, but with increasing and scarcely-concealed ill-humour. '? Besides, at the worst, their return must be waited. You have, I repeat, no other course to take, unless you would injure the man whom you wish to save, and expose yourself also to many unpleasant surmises, or perhaps to something worse,' he added, in a significant manner.

Had the person to whom I addressed myself been a placeman, I should have already fancied I saw the cossacks advancing to seize and convey me to a dungeon like that of M. Pernet's.

I felt that the patience of my adviser was at an

GREAT NOVGOROD.

279

end; I had nothing, in fact, to reply to his arguments: I therefore retired, promising to leave, and gratefully thanking him for his counsel.

As it is obvious I can do nothing here I will leave at once, I said to myself: but the slow motions of my fekljager took up the rest of the morning, and it was past four in the afternoon before I was on the road to Petersburg.

The sulkiness of the courier, the want of horses, felt every where on the road on account of relays being retained for the household of the emperor and for military officers, as well as for couriers proceeding from Borodino to Petersburg, made my journey long and tedious: in my impatience I insisted on travelling all night; but I gained nothing by this haste, being obliged, for want of horses, to pass six whole hours at Great Novgorod, within fifty leagues of Petersburg.

I was scarcely in a fitting mood to visit the cradle of the Slavonian empire, and which became also the tomb of its liberty. The famous church of Saint Sophia encloses the sepulchres of Vladimir Iaroslawitch, who died in 1051, of his mother Anne, and of an emperor of Constantinople. It resembles the other Eus-sian churches, and perhaps is not more authentic than the pretended ancient cathedral that contains the bones of Minine at Nijni Novgorod. I no longer believe in the dates of any old monuments that are shown me in Russia. But I still believe in the names of its rivers: the VolkofF represents to me the frightful scenes connected with the siege of this republican city, taken, retaken, and decimated by Ivan the Terrible. I could fancy I saw the imperial hyena,

280SOUVENIRS OF I VAX IV.

presiding over carnage and pestilence, couched among the ruins of the city; and the bloody corpses of his subjects seemed to issue out of the river that was choked with their bodies, to prove to me the horrors of intestine wars. It is worthy of remark, that the correspondence of the Archbishop Pinen, and of other principal citizens of Novgorod, with the Poles, was the cause which brought the evil on the city, where thirty thousand innocent persons perished in the combat, and in the executions and massacres invented and presided over by the czar. There were days on which six hundred were at once executed before his eyes; and all these horrors were enacted to punish a crime unpardonable from that epoch — the crime of clandestine communication with the Poles. This took place nearly three hundred years ago, in 1570. Great Novgorod lias never recovered the stroke : she could have replaced her dead, but she could not survive the abolition of her democratic institutions : her whitewashed houses are no longer stained with blood; they appear as if they had been built only yesterday; but her streets are deserted, and three parts of her ruins are spread over the plain, beyond the narrow bounds of the actual city, which is but a shadow and a name. This is all that remains of the famous republic of the middle ages. Where are the fruits of the revolutions which never ceased to saturate the now almost desert soil with blood ? Here, all is as silent as it was before the history. God has only too often had to teach us, that objects which men, blinded with pride, viewed as a worthy end of their efforts, were really only a means of employing their superfluous powers in the

M. DE BARANTE.

281

effervescence of youth. Such are the principles of more than one heroic action.

For three centuries the bell of the vetche* has ceased to summon the people of Novgorod, formerly the most glorious and the most turbulent of the Russian populations, to deliberate upon their affairs. The will of the czars stifles in every heart all sentiments, even regret for the memory of effaced glory. Some years ago, atrocious scenes occurred between the cossacks and the inhabitants of the country in the military colonies established in the vicinity of the decayed city. But the insurrection was stifled, and every thing has returned to its accustomed order, that is, to the silence and peace of the tomb.

I was very happy to leave this abode, formerly famous for the disorders of liberty, now desolated by what is called good order, — a word which is here equivalent to that of death.

Although I made all possible haste, I did not reach Petersburg until the fourth day: immediately after leaving my carriage I repaired to M. de Barante's.

He was quite ignorant of the arrest of M. Pcrnet, and appeared surprised to hear of it through me, especially