POPULARITY IN RUSSIA.
19
hand every time that the emperor may have spoken to him, smiles are lavishly bestowed, and on leaving, he is pronounced a distinguished traveller. He reminds me of the bourgeois gentleman played upon by the Mufti of Moliere. The Russians have coined a French word that admirably designates their political hospitality; in speaking of foreigners whom they blind by means of fetes —
Ridicule, that empty consolation of the oppressed, is here the pleasure of the peasant, as sarcasm is the accomplishment of the noble; irony and imitation are the only natural talents which I have discovered among the Russians. The stranger once exposed to the venom of their criticism would never recover from it; he would be passed from mouth to mouth like a deserter running the gauntlet; and finally be trampled under the feet of a crowd the most hardened and ambitious in the world. The ambitious have always a pleasure in ruining others : <c Destroy him as a precaution, there will at any rate be one the
* II faut les
† A well known means of flattery, and one of which the success is certain, is to exhibit one's self in the streets of Petersburg before the eyes of the Emperor without great coat or cloak : a heroic flattery of the climate which may cost the life of him who practises it. It is not difficult to displease in a land where such modes of pleasing are in use.
20PICK-POCKETS IN THE PALACE.
less; every man must be viewed as a rival because it is possible that he may become one.'
I have no greater belief in the probity of the
Yesterday, at the imperial and popular ball of the palace of Peterhoff, the Sardinian ambassador had his watch very adroitly extracted notwithstanding the chain which formed its guard. Several people lost also their handkerchiefs and other articles in the press. I myself lost a purse lined with a few ducats, and consoled myself for the loss in laughing at the eulogies lavished on the probity of this people by its lords, The latter well know the real value of all their fine phrases, and I am not sorry to know it also. In observing their futile finesses, I seek for the dupes of falsehoods so puerile, and I cry, with Basil, ' Who is deceiving here ? All the world is in the secret.'
In vain do the Russians talk and pretend ; every honest observer can only see in them the Greeks of the Lower Empire formed in accordance with the rules of modern strategy by the Prussians of the eighteenth and the French of the nineteenth century.
The popularity of an autocrat appears to me as
POLITICAL REFLECTIONS.21
suspicious in Russia, as does the honesty of the men who in France preach absolute democracy in the name of liberty, — both are murderous sophisms. To destroy liberty in preaching liberality is assassination, for society lives by truth ; to make tyranny patriarchal is assassination also.
I have one fixed political principle ; it is that men can and ought to be governed without being deceived. If in private life falsehood is degrading, in public life it is criminal; every government that lies, is a conspirator more dangerous than the traitor whom it legally condemns to capital punishment; and — notwithstanding the example of certain great minds spoilt by an age of sophists,—where truth is renounced, genius forsakes its seat, and, by a strange reversion of things,'the master humbles himself before the slave; for the man who deceives is below the victim of deception. This is as applicable to politics and to literature as to religion.
My idea of the possibility of making Christian sincerity subservient to politics is not so chimerical as it may appear to men of business ; for it is an idea also of the Russian Emperor's, practical and clear-sighted as he undoubtedly is. 1 do not believe that there is at the present day a prince upon any throne who so detests falsehood and who falsifies so little as this monarch.
He has made himself the champion of monarchical power in Europe, and, it is well known, he boldly and openly maintains this position. He is not seen, as is a certain government, preaching in each different locality a different policy according to varying, and purely commercial local interests ; on the con-
22
JOURNAL DES DEBATS.
trary, he favours everywhere indiscriminately the principles which accord with his system. Is it thus that England is liberal, constitutional, and philan-thropical ?
The Emperor reads daily, from one end to the other, one French newspaper, and only one, the
To sustain power in order to preserve social order, is, in France, the object of the best and worthiest minds ; it is also the constant aim of the
France is suffering under the disease common to the age, she is suffering under it more than any other land ; this disease is a hatred of authority; the remedy, therefore, consists in fortifying authority : such is the sentiment of the Emperor at Petersburg, and of the
But as they agree only in regard to the end to be obtained, they are so much the more opposed as they seem to be united. The choice of means will often cause dissension among those gathered under the same banner ; they meet as allies, they separate as enemies.
The legitimacy of hereditary right appears to the Emperor of Russia the only means of attaining his end ; and in forcing a little the ordinary sense of the old word ' legitimacy,' under pretext that there exists another more sure,—that, namely, of election
SITE OF PETEEHOFF.23
based upon the true interests of the country, — the
From the contest of these two legitimacies, one of which is blind as fate, the other wavering as passion,
