At five o'clock on the following morning, Alexander was an emperor, and also an imputed parricide, although he had only consented (tin's is true, I believe) to the confinement of his father, in order to save his mother from prison and perhaps death, to protect himself from a similar fate, and to preserve his eomitry from the rage and caprice of an insane autocrat.
At the present day, the Russians pass the old Michael Palace without daring to look at it. In the schools, and elsewhere, the death of the Emperor Paul is forbidden to be mentioned or even believed.
I am astonished that this palace of inconvenient recollections has not been pulled down. The traveller congratulates himself at the sight of a monument whose antique appearance is remarkable in a land where despotism renders every thing uniform and
THE SPY BAFFLED.
153
new; where the reigning notion effaces daily the traces of the past. Its square and solid form, its deep moats, tragic associations, and secret gates and staircases favourable to crime, impart to it an imposing air, which is a rare advantage in Petersburg. At each step I take I am amazed to observe the confusion that has been every where made in this city between two arts so very different as those of architecture and decoration. Peter the Great and his successors seem to have taken their capital for a theatre.
I was struck with the startled air of my guide, when I questioned him, in the most easy and natural manner that I could assume, on the events that had taken place in the old palace. The physiognomy of this man replied, " it is easy to see you are a new comer." Surprise, fear, mistrust, affected innocence, pretended ignorance, the experience of an old soldier who would not easily be duped, took possession, by turns, of his countenance, and made it a book equally instructing and amusing to peruse. When your spy is at fault by reason of your apparent security, the expression of his face is truly grotesque, for he believes himself compromised by you so soon as he sees that you do not fear being compromised by him. The spy thinks only of his vocation; and if you escape his nets, he begins at once to imagine that he is going to fall into yours.
A promenade through the streets of Petersburg, under the charge of a domestique de place, is not without interest, and little resembles a progress through the capitals of other civilised lands. One thing is singularly connected with and dependent on another ii 5
15-1 THE NEVA— f'JL¾ qUAYS AND BKÍDGES.
in a state governed with so close a logic as that which presides over the policy of Russia.
After leaving the old and tragical Michael Palace, I crossed a large square resembling the Champ de Mars at Paris, so spacious is it and so empty. On one side is a public garden, on the other a few houses ; there is sand instead of pavement in the middle of the area, and dust in every part of. This immense square, the form of which is vague and undefined, extends to the Neva, near which termination is a bronze statue of Suwaroff.
The Neva, its bridges and quays, form the real glory of Petersburg. The scene here is so vast, that all the rest seems little in comparison. The Neva is like a vessel, so full that its brim disappears under the water, which is ready to flow over on every side. Venice and Amsterdam appear to me better protected against the sea than St. Petersburg.
The vicinity of a river, large as a lake, and which flows on a level with the land through a marshy plain, lost in the mists of the atmosphere and the vapours of the sea, was assuredly of all the sites in the world the least favourable for the foundation of a capital. The water will here, sooner or later, teach a lesson to human pride. The granite itself is no security against the work of winters in this humid ice-house, where the foundations of rock and the ramparts of the famous citadel, built by Peter the Great, have already twice given way. They have been repaired, and will be yet again, in order to preserve this chef-cCœuvre of human pride and human will.
I wished at once to cross the bridge in order to examine it more nearly ; but my servant first con-
CABIN OF ГЕТЕР. THE GREAT. 155
ducted me, in face of the fortress, to the house of Peter the Great, which is separated from it by a road and an open piece of ground.
It is a cabin, preserved, as is said, in the same state as that in which the emperor left it. In the citadel the emperors are now buried, and the prisoners of state detained — singular manner of honouring the dead! In thinking of all the tears shed there, under the tombs of the sovereigns of Russia, one is reminded of the funerals of some Asian kings. A tomb bedewed with blood would, in my eyes, be less impious: tears flow for a longer period, and are perhaps accompanied with deeper pangs.
During the time that the imperial artisan inhabited the cabin, his future capital was built beneath his eye. It should be admitted in his praise, that, at that period, he thought much less of the palace than of the city.
One of the chambers of this illustrious cottage, that, namely, which was the workshop of the princely carpenter, is полу transformed into a chapel. It is entered with as much reverence as are the most sacred churches in the empire. The Russians are ever ready to make saints of their heroes. They delight in confounding the dreadful virtues of their masters with the benevolent power of their patrons, and endeavour to view the cruelties of history through the veil of faith.
Another Russian hero, in my opinion little deserving of admiration, has been sanctified by the Greek priests; I mean Alexander Newski—a model of prudence, but a martyr neither to piety nor to generosity. The national church has canonised this wise rather и 6
15GRUSSIAN VETERANS.
than heroic prince—this Ulysses among the saints. An enormous convent, has been built around hit reliques.
The tomb, enclosed within the church of Saint Alexander, is in itself an edifice. It consists of an altar of massive silver, surmounted with a species of pyramid of the same metal, which rises to the vault of a vast church. The convent, the church, and the cenotaph form one of the wonders of Russia. I contemplated them with more astonishment than admiration ; for though the costliness of this pious work is immense, the rules of taste and of art have been little heeded in its construction.
In the cabin of the Czar, I was shown a boat of Ins own building, and several other objects religiously preserved, and placed under the guard of a veteran soldier. In Russia, churches, palaces, public places, and many private houses, are entrusted to the keeping of military pensioners. These unfortunate beings would be left without means of subsistence in their old age, unless they were, on leaving the barracks, converted into porters. In such posts they retain their long military capotes, which are made of coarse wool, and are generally much worn and dirty. At each visit that you make, men, thus clad, receive you at the gates of the public buildings and at the doors of the houses. They are spectres in uniform that serve to remind one of the discipline which here rules over every thing. Petersburg is a camp metamorphosed into a city. The veteran who kept guard in the imperial cottage, after having lighted several wax-tapers in the chapel, led me to the sleeping apartment of Peter the Great, emperor of all the Russias, A
AUSTERITY OF PETER THE GREAT.157
carpenter of our days would not lodge his apprentice in such a place.
This glorious austerity illustrates the epoch and the country as much as the man. In Russia, at that time, every thing was sacrificed to the future; every one was employed in building the palaces of their yet unborn masters; and the original founders of the magnificent edifices, not experiencing themselves the wants of luxury, were content to be the purveyors of the future civilisation, and took pride in preparing fitting abodes for the unknown potentates who were to follow them. There is certainly a greatness of mind evidenced in this care which a chieftain and his people take for the power, and even the vanity, of the generations that are yet to come. The reliance which the living have thus placed in the glory of their distant posterity has something about it which is noble and original. It is a disinterested and poetical sentiment, far loftier than the respect which men and nations are accustomed to entertain for their ancestors.