takes possession of me, and I think only of flyiug.
The fortune of a wealthy man is here computed by the heads of peasants. The man who is not free is coined; he is equivalent (on an average) to ten roubles a year to his proprietor, who is called free because he is the owner of serfs. There are districts where each peasant brings three and four times this sum to his master. In Russia the human money alters in value, as, with us, the land, which doubles in price when markets can be opened for its produce. Here I involuntarily pass my time in calculating how many families it has taken to pay for a bonnet, a shawl, or a rose tree : nothing appears to me as it does elsewhere ; every thing seems tainted with blood. The number of human beings condemned to suffer, even unto death, in order to furnish the requisite quantity of stuff which forms the dress of some lovely woman at court, occupies my thoughts more than all her finery or her beauty. Absorbed in the labour of this melancholy computation, I feci myself growing unjust. The most charming face reminds me, in spite of my efforts to banish such ideas, of those caricatures of Bonaparte which were spread all over Europe
UNFORTUNATE STATE OF SERFS.181
in 1815. At a little distance the colossal statue of the Emperor appeared a simple likeness, but, on inspecting it more nearly, each feature was found to be composed of mutilated corpses.
In all countries the poor work for the rich, who pay them for their labour; but these poor are not folded for life in some enclosure like mere herds of cattle; and, though obliged to toil at the labour which daily provides their children with bread, they at least enjoy a semblance of liberty; now semblance, or appearance, is almost every thing to a being whose views are limited, but whose imagination is boundless. With us the hireling has the right of changing his employers, his residence, and even his profession, but the Kiissian serf is a chattel of his lord's; enlisted from birth to death in the service, his life represents to this proprietor a part and parcel of the sum necessary to supply the caprices and fantasies of fashion. Assuredly, in a state thus constituted, luxury is no longer innocent. All communities in which a middle class of society does not exist, ought to proscribe luxury as a scandal, for in well-organised lands, it is the profits which this class draws from the vanity of the superior classes which produce general opulence. If, as is anticipated, Russia should become a land of industrial arts, the relations between the serf and the owner of the soil will be modified, and a population of independent dealers and artisans will rise up between the nobles and the peasants, but at present the commerce of the land is scarcely born; the manufacturers, merchants, and tradesmen, are almost all Germans.
It is here only too easy to be deceived by the ap-
182CHARACTER OF THE RUSSIANS.
pearances of civilisation. If you look to the court and the people who are its votaries, you may suppose yourself among a nation far advanced in social culture and in political economy; but when you reflect on the relations which exist between the different classes of society, when you observe how small the number of these classes — finally, when you examine attentively the groundwork of manners and of things — you perceive the existence of a real barbarism, scarcely disguised under a magnificence which is revolting.
I do not reproach the Russians for being what they are, what I blame in them is, their pretending to be what we are. They are still uncultivated: this state would at least allow room for hope; but I see them incessantly occupied with the desire of mimicking other nations, and this they do after the true manner of monkeys, caricaturing what they copy. They thus appear to me spoilt for the savage state, and yet wanting in the requisites of civilisation; and the terrible words of Voltaire or of Diderot, now forgotten in France, recur to my mind — 'The Russians have rotted before they have ripened.'
At Petersburg every thing has an air of opulence, grandeur, and magnificence; but if we should by this show of things judge of the reality we should find ourselves strangely deceived. Generally, the first effect of civilisation is to render what may be called,
If you wish to ascertain precisely what is to be seen in this great city, and if Schnitzler does not
CHARACTER OF PETER THE GREAT. 183
satisfy you, you will find no other guide *: no bookseller has on sale a complete directory to the curiosities of Petersburg: either the well informed men whom you question have an interest in not answering you, or they have something else to do. The Emperor, his health, his movements, the project with which he is ostensibly occupied, such are the only subjects worthy of the thoughts of a Russian who thinks at all. The catechism of the court is the only necessary knowledge. All take pleasure in rendering themselves agreeable to their master, by hiding some corner of truth from the eyes of travellers. No one has any idea of gratifying the curious ; on the contrary, they love to deceive them by false data: it requires the talents of a great critic to travel to advantage in Russia. Under despotism, curiosity is synonymous with indiscretion. The empire is the emperor.
And yet this frightful extent of greatness was not sufficient for the Czar Peter. That man, not content with being the reason of his people, would also become their conscience. The sovereign who did not shrink before such a responsibility, and who, notwithstanding his long apparent, or real hesitation, finally rendered himself culpable of so enormous an usurpation, has inflicted more evil on the world by this single outrage against the prerogatives of the priests, and the religious liberty of man, than he has conferred benefit on Russia by all his warlike and political talents, and his genius for the arts of industry. This emperor, type and model of the empire, and of
* Sclmitzler is author of the best work on Russian statistics that has been written.
184 CRUELTIES OF PETER THE GREAT.
the emperors in all ages, was a singular union of the great and the minute. With a lust of power grasping as that of the most cruel tyrants of any age or nation, he united the ingenuity of the artisan in a degree that made him the rival of the best mechanics of his times; a sovereign scrupulously terrible, an eagle and an ant, a lion and a beaver : — this monarch, dreadful during life, now imposes himself on posterity as a species of saint, and tyrannises over the judgments, as he formerly tyrannised over the acts of men. To pass an impartial opinion upon him is at the present time a sacrilege which is not without danger, even for a stranger, in Russia. I brave this danger every moment of the day, for of all yokes, the most insupportable to me is that which imposes the necessity of admiring.* In Russia, power, all unlimited as it is, entertains an extreme dread of censure, or even of free speech. An oppressor is of all others the man who most fears the truth; he only escapes ridicule by the terror and mystery with which he environs himself. Hence it is that there must be no speaking of persons here : one must not allude to the
* In the
CULPABILITY OF ТПЕ ARISTOCRACY. 185
the clandestine amours that certain malevolent persons have ascribed to the reigning emperor. The amusements of this prince are viewed only as relaxations from the cares of greatness. This once known, and with whatever consequences they may be attended to certain families, one must profess ignorance of them under pain of
