people, we must wait until yours exists.'
I called to mind at the same time a fete which I once gave to the lower orders at Seville. It was under the despotism of Ferdinand VII., but the true politeness of those Spaniards, free
Russia is a book, the table of whose contents is magnificent, but beware of going further. If you turn over the leaves you will find no performance answering to the promise: all the chapters are headed, but all have to be filled np. How many of
* Russian peasants.
† See ' Spain under Ferdinand VII.'
CHILDREN OF THE PRIESTS.15
the Russian forests are only marshes, where you will never cut a faggot! How many distant regiments are there without men, and cities and roads which exist only in project! The nation itself is as yet nothing more than a puff placarded upon Europe, dupe of a diplomatic fiction. I have found here no real life except that of the emperor's; no constitution except that of the court.
The tradespeople who ought to form a middle class are too few in number to possess any influence in the state; besides, they are almost all foreigners. The authors amount to one or two in each generation : the artists are like the authors, their scarcity causes them to be esteemed; but though this favours their personal prospects, it is injurious to their social influence. There are no legal pleaders in a country where there is no justice: where, then, is to be found that middle class which constitutes the strength of other states, and without which the people is only a flock, guided by a few well-trained watch-dogs? I have not mentioned another class of men who are not to be reckoned either among the great or the little. These are the sons of the priests, who almost all become subaltern
16
CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS.
The punishment of death does not exist in this land, except for the crime of high treason; but there are certain criminals whom they nevertheless kill. The way in which they reconcile the mildness of the code with the traditional ferocity of manners is this: when a criminal is condemned to more than a hundred strokes of the knout, the executioner, who understands the meaning of such a sentence, kills him through humanity, by striking him at the third blow on a mortal part. And yet the punishment of death is abolished ! To making the law thus lie, the proclamation of the most audacious tyranny would be preferable.
If it is thought that I judge Russia too severely, I must plead the involuntary impression that I receive each day from persons and from things, and which every friend of humanity would receive in my place, if like me, he endeavoured to look beyond that which would be shown him.
This empire, immense as it is, is no more than a prison, of which the emperor keeps the key. Nothing can exceed the misery of the subjects unless it be that of the prince. The life of the gaoler has always appeared to me so similar to that of the prisoner, that I am astonished at the mental illusion which makes the one believe himself so much less to be pitied than the other.
Man here knows neither the real social enjoyments of cultivated minds, nor the absolute and animal liberty of the savage, nor yet the independence of action of the half-savage — the barbarian; I can see no compensation for the misery of being born under this system, except the dreams of vanity and the
ABJECT STATE OF THE PEOPLE. 17
love of command; on these passions I stumble every time I return to the endeavour of analysing the moral life of the inhabitants of Russia. Russia thinks and lives as a soldier ! A soldier, to whatever country he may belong, is scarcely a citizen ; and here less than any where can he be called one; he is rather a prisoner for life, condemned to look after other prisoners.
It should be observed that the word prison signifies something more here than it does elsewhere. When one thinks on all the subterranean cruelties concealed from our pity by the discipline of silence, in a land where every man performs an apprenticeship to discretion, it makes one tremble. He who would conceive a hatred for reserve should come here. Every little check in conversation, every change of expression, every inflexion of voice, teaches me the danger of confidence and candour.
The very appearance of the houses brings to my mind the unhappy condition of human existence in this land.
If I cross the threshold of the palace of some great nobleman, and see there a disgusting and ill-disguised uncleanliness reigning amidst an ostentatious display of luxury; if I, so to speak, inhale vermin, even under the roof of opulence, — my mind will not stop at that which is presented merely by the senses ; it wanders further, and sees all the filth and corruption which must poison the dungeons of a country where even the rich do not shrink from loathsome contact. When I suffer from the dampness of my chamber, I think of the unfortunate beings exposed to that of the sub-marine dungeons of Kronstadt, the fortress
18
RULES FOR OBTAINING
of Petersburg, and of many other subterranes of which I forget even the name. The ghastly visages of the soldiers whom I meet in the streets remind me of the plunder of those employed in provisioning the army. The fraud of these traitors, paid by the emperor to feed his guards, is written in lines of lead on the livid faces of the unfortunate wretches, deprived of wholesome and even sufficient nutriment by men who care only to enrich themselves as rapidly as possible, unmindful of the disgrace they are bringing on their government, and of the maledictions of the regiments of slaves whom they kill. Finally, at each step I here take, I see rising before me the phantom of Siberia, and I think of all that is implied in the name of that political desert, that abyss of misery, that tomb of living men, —a land peopled with infamous criminals and sublime heroes, a colony without which this empire would be as incomplete as a palace without cellars.
A traveller who would allow himself to be indoctrinated by the people of the country, might overrun the empire from one end to the other, and return home without having surveyed any thing but a series of facades. This is what he should do in order to please his entertainers. I am aware that such is the case, but so high a price for their hospitality I cannot afford to pay.
Provided a stranger shows himself rdiculously active, rises early after having retired to rest late, never fails to attend every ball and review, in short, provided he keeps too constantly in motion to be able to think, he is well received everywhere, well thought of, and well feted ; a crowd of strangers press his
