Shinshan!Shevergen!Beat the pace, beat!Don’t spare your feet!
Shinshan!Shevergen!Beat the pace, beat!Don’t spare your feet!
Shinshan!
Shevergen!
Beat the pace, beat!
Don’t spare your feet!
In our ladies’ apartment the old drunken fool, the Princess Abbess Rjévskaya, a veritable witch, whirled away in a dance, lifting her skirts above her head and singing in a voice hoarse with drink:—
Tune up! tune up! my music sweetWork on, work on my staff,My father-in-law from the stoveHas fallen into a trough!Had I but known this would occurI would have placed him at the top,And falling, he’d have broken his head....
Tune up! tune up! my music sweetWork on, work on my staff,My father-in-law from the stoveHas fallen into a trough!Had I but known this would occurI would have placed him at the top,And falling, he’d have broken his head....
Tune up! tune up! my music sweet
Work on, work on my staff,
My father-in-law from the stove
Has fallen into a trough!
Had I but known this would occur
I would have placed him at the top,
And falling, he’d have broken his head....
The Tsaritsa, with her hair in disorder, covered with sweat, red and flown with wine, was watching her, and beat the time with her hands and foot, and laughed like mad. At the beginning of the orgie she tried to persuade her Highness to drink, using some curious sayings, which appear to be numerous on the subject in Russian. “Bumper on bumper is better than stroke upon stroke!” “Even cabbages flagwithout water!” “Even a hen must drink!” Yet, noticing that the Crown Princess was almost fainting, she left off, and even secretly added water to her wine and ours at the same time. To water wine is counted a great crime at such banquets.
Towards the end of the night—we had remained at table from six in the evening till four in the morning—the Tsaritsa several times went to the door and beckoned to the Tsar, saying:
“Isn’t it time to go home?”
“Never mind, Katinka, to-morrow is a holiday,” answered the Tsar.
Each time I lifted the curtain I saw something new in the men’s apartment.
Somebody walking across the table had stepped with his boot into a dish of fish brawn. The Tsar had only a moment before forced some of this fish down the Chancellor Golóvkin’s throat. Golóvkin could not bear fish; servants held his arms and legs; he struggled, choked, and grew very red. Having done with Golóvkin, the Tsar turned to the Hanoverian Resident, Weber; he fondled and kissed him, with one hand he supported his head, with the other he held a bumper to his lips, begging him to drink it. Then taking off his wig, he kissed now the front, now the back of his head. He lifted his lips and kissed his teeth. They say the reason of this tenderness was the Tsar’s desire to get out of the Resident a diplomatic secret, Moussin Pushkin, who was being tickled below the neck, squealed like a young pig brought to the knife. He is very ticklish. The Tsar is trying to accustom him to it.
The great Admiral Apraksin burst into a flood of tears. The privy councillor Tolstoi crept about on all fours; it turned out afterwards that he was not so drunk as he pretended; he did it to escape more drink. A bottle had cut open the Vice Admiral Cruis’ head. Prince Ménshikoff had fallen to the ground; he seemed comatose; his face had grown livid. People busied themselves round him and tried by rubbing to revive him, lest he should die—death is not an unusual ending to such orgies. The Tsar’s chaplain, the Archimandrite Theodosius, was sick; “I shall die, holy Mother!” he piteously moaned. The Kniaz-Popewas snoring; his head lay on the table in a pool of wine.
Hissing, roaring, the noise of breaking china, bad language, boxes on the ear, which no longer called forth any attention, seemed to fill the air. A stench prevailed as in the vilest tavern. Had anyone come down from the outside he could not have helped vomiting.
My head swam. I seemed at times to lose consciousness. The human faces all looked beast-like; the Tsar’s the most terrible of all. Large and round, with staring eyes, slightly oblong and prominent, with pointed moustaches standing out, it was the face of a tiger or a huge wild cat. Calm and disdainful, his look was clear and piercing. He alone had remained sober; and was now with curiosity peering into the vilest mysteries, into the bared soul of human beings, which lay turned inside out before him in this inquisition chamber, where the instrument of torture was wine.
The Kniaz-Pope was roused and lifted from the table. The Kniaz-Caesar had also had time to sleep off his worst. They were made to dance together; incapable of standing on their feet they had to be propped up on both sides. The pope wore a mock tiara crowned by a nude Bacchus, in his hands he held a cross made of pipes. The Caesar, wearing a mock crown, held a sceptre in his hand. The Tsarevitch lay on the ground dead drunk, between these two fools, these phantoms of ancient dignity—the Russian Tsar and the Russian Patriarch. What happened next I don’t remember, and will not even try to recall, it was too disgusting.
On the neighbouring ships reveille was sounded. On ours too the roll of the drum was heard. The Tsar himself, who is an excellent drummer, was sounding retreat. This signified that a great battle had been waged with Bacchus, and he had remained victor. Grenadiers were bearing away drunken nobles, like bodies from a battle field.
When we saw the sky at last, it seemed to us we had escaped—to be grandiose—from hell; speaking vulgarly—from a cesspool.
May 9.
To-day the Tsar left Petersburg with a large fleet, he has gone to meet the Swedes.
May 20.
It is a long time since I wrote in this diary. Her Highness has been ill after the entertainment. I have not left her. And besides there is nothing worth writing about. Everything is so sad, that one feels inclined neither to talk nor think; let come what will!
May 25.
I was not far wrong, the truce did not last long. Again a black cloud has come between the Tsarevitch and her Highness. Again they do not meet for whole weeks. He too is ill. The doctors say it is consumption; I think it is brandy.
June 4.
The Tsarevitch came in dressed for a journey in a German travelling coat; he talked about things in general, and all at once said:
“Adieu, ich gehe nach Karlsbad.”
The Crown Princess was so taken aback that she could say nothing. She did not even ask for how long. I thought he was joking, but afterwards it appeared that almost immediately on leaving us, he had taken his seat in the coach and was gone. It is said he has really gone to Karlsbad for a cure.
And now we are left alone without Tsar or Tsarevitch. Her Highness does not receive any letters from her parents; they probably believe the slanders circulated about her and are displeased with her. We are forsaken by all.
July 7.
A letter from the Tsar to her Highness. “I do not wish to trouble you, nor act against my conscience, but the absence of your husband, my son, compels me to do so, in order to prevent the idle talk of loose tongues, which are wont to convert truth into lies. The fact of your pregnancy has been spread abroad; and therefore a certain arrangement must be made for the time when by God’s will you will be delivered. The Chancellor Golóvkin will acquaint you with the details of what you will be expected to conform to, and then the mouths of all slanderers will be closed.”
The arrangement was made. Her Highness was surrounded by three women: the Vice Chancellor’s wife,General Bruce’s wife, and the old fool Rjévskaya, the same who danced at the banquet. Her Highness was only slightly acquainted with them. These three shrews are continuously about her, ostensibly to take care of her, really to act as simple spies.
And what does all this mean? what are they frightened at? what deception is possible? surely not an exchange; a boy for a girl, by those who would like to see the inheritance assured to the offspring of the Tsarevitch. Or is it only an excess of amenity on the Tsaritsa’s part?
Only now we realize how much we are hated and suspected. Charlotte’s whole crime consists in being her husband’s wife. The father is against his son, and we stand between them as between two fires.
“I will obediently submit to your Majesty’s wish with regard to the appointment of these three women for my protection,” Charlotte replied, to the Tsar, “all the more as the thought of deceiving you or the Crown Prince had never entered my head. I am hurt by this strange and unmerited treatment. I thought the love and clemency so often promised me by your Majesty were sufficient safeguard against slander, and a warrant that the guilty ones should meet with due punishment. It is grievous that my enemies should be strong enough to incite such intrigues. God is my only refuge in this foreign land, and when abandoned by everybody else, He will hearken unto the sighs of my heart and put an end to my sufferings.”
July 12.
This morning at 7 o’clock her Highness was successfully delivered of a daughter. No news whatever from the Tsarevitch.
August 1.
The news of a Russian victory over the Swedes on July 27, has arrived; it is said an entire squadron under the command of Ehrenshild has been captured. The whole day long the bells are ringing and cannon firing. It is true they are not economical of their powder here; the most insignificant victory, the taking of three or four rotten galleys is sufficient excuse for firing off cannon, and at such a rate as though the world had been conquered.
September 9.
The Tsar has returned to Petersburg. Again a cannonade as though it were a besieged city. We are almost deaf. Endless triumphal processions, fireworks with boastful allegories: the Tsar is glorified as if he were a conqueror of worlds, a Caesar or an Alexander. Again an orgie; we thanked the Lord we were spared this time. Again, it is said, they drank like swine. Rain and mud. A low, dark and, as it were, impenetrable sky looks in through the windows. Wet crows perch cawing on the bare branches. Dreariness! Dreariness!
September 19.
I found the Crown Princess weeping over old letters the Tsarevitch had written her during their engagement. Crooked, broken characters on pencil lines, empty compliments, diplomatic amiabilities. And she, poor thing, shed tears in looking over them!
We learnt by chance that the Tsarevitch lives incognito in Karlsbad and will not return here before the winter.
September 20.
In order to forget myself, and not to think about our affairs, I have decided to write down everything I see or hear about the Tsar. Leibnitz is right—“quanto magis hujus Principis indolem prospicio tanto eam magis admiror”—The longer I watch this sovereign’s character the more I marvel at it.
October 1.
I have seen the Tsar forge iron in the dockyard smithy. The courtiers ministered to him, made the fire up, blew the bellows, carried the coal, soiling the silk and velvet of their gold-embroidered coats thereby.
“That’s right; that is as a Tsar ought to be! He does not eat his bread unearned. He works better than a ‘bourlak,’” said one of the bystanders, a common working man.
The Tsar was wearing a leather apron; his hair was tied up with a string; his sleeves were turned up and showed his bare sinewy arms: his face was smeared with soot. The tall smith, lit up by the red blaze of the furnace, resembled a Titan. His hammer hit the white, hot iron so hard thatthe sparks showered around, the anvil trembled and rang as if on the point of being smashed into shivers.
I remembered the words spoken by an old boyar:
“Sovereign, thou would’st forge a new Russia out of Vulcan’s iron. Hard work for the hammer! hard, too, for the anvil!”
“Time, too, is like hot iron; forge it at white heat!”
So runs one of the Tsar’s sayings. And he indeed forges Russia at white heat. He never rests; he is always hurrying somewhither. It seems as though he could not stop to rest even if he would. He is killing himself with feverish activity, an incredible tension of strenuousness, a ceaseless convulsiveness. The doctors say that his strength is undermined; that he won’t live long. He is always taking the Olonetz iron waters, yet at the same time he drinks brandy; thus the remedy does more harm than good.
The first impression he leaves on the observer is rapidity. He is all motion; does not walk, but runs. The Imperial Ambassador, Count Kinski—a pretty solid man—assures us that he would rather take part in battles, than have a two hours’ audience with the Tsar, because he is forced, in spite of his stoutness, to run after him all the time, so that he is bathed in sweat even in the severest Russian frost. “Time is like life,” repeats the Tsar. “Loss of time is death.”
Fire and water are his elements, he loves them like one born in them,—water like a fish, fire like a salamander. He has a passion for cannonades, and for various experiments with fire and fireworks. He always lights the fireworks himself, rushing into the flames; I was present once when he singed his hair. He says he is inuring his people to the smell of powder; but this is only an excuse, fire itself he simply loves.
His passion is as great for water. Although the offspring of Muscovy’s Tsars who never saw the sea, he yet began longing for it, when, but a child, he was secluded in the close terems of the Kremlin Palace, like a wild gosling in a hen-house.
He used to float in toy boats on artificial lakes. When at last he got to the sea he could not tear himself away fromit again. He spends most of his time on water, he sleeps every day after dinner on his frigate; when ill he lives on board altogether, and sea-air generally cures him. During the summer he feels the lack of air, even among the large gardens of Peterhof, so he fitted himself up a bedroom in Monplaisir, a small house, washed by the Finnish Gulf; the windows of the bedroom look straight upon the sea. In Petersburg the Observatory is built on a sandbank in the mouth of the Neva. In the Summer Garden, also, the Palace is surrounded on two sides by water. Steps lead from the door straight down into the water, just as in Amsterdam and Venice. Once, during winter, when the Neva had already put on her ice-chains, and only before the Palace there remained a round, open ice-free space, about a hundred yards in circumference, he sailed on it up and down in a tiny boat, like a duck in a pool. When the whole river was covered with hard ice he ordered a space, about a hundred yards long and thirty yards wide, to be daily cleared and swept of the snow: I myself have seen him sliding along this surface in small pretty boyers, fitted with steel skates and bulge-ways. “We sail on the ice,” said he, “so as not to forget our nautical exercises during the winter.” Another time, at Moscow, in the Christmas holidays, he went along the streets in a huge sleigh—rigged in imitation of a real sailing vessel. He loves letting young geese and ducks, which the Tsaritsa gives him, go into the water. He delights in their glee as though he himself were a water bird.
He says his first thoughts about the sea date from his reading the narrative of the maritime expedition of Prince Oleg of Kieff to Constantinople, recorded by the Chronicler Nestor. If this be true he is only resuscitating the old in the new, the native in the foreign. From the sea, across the land to the sea—this is Russia’s course!
Sometimes it seems to me that the contradictions of his two beloved elements, water and fire, have merged in him into one being, strange and curious. I know not whether kind or cruel, divine or diabolic—but certainly inhuman.
A strange timidity occasionally besets him. I myself have seen him at a pompous reception of Ambassadors sitting on the throne, confused, blushing, perspiring, trying to gain courage by repeatedly taking snuff; he did not know what to do with his eyes, and even avoided his wife’s glances. When the ceremony was over and he was no longer obliged to stay on the throne, he was as merry as a schoolboy. The Markgravine of Brandenburg told me that at her first interview with the Tsar—who it is true was quite young at that time—he turned away, covered his face with his hands like a shy debutante, and did nothing but repeat, “Je ne sais pas m’exprimer”—“I cannot talk.” He soon recovered, however, and became almost too free. He expressed the desire to convince himself that the German ladies’ hard waists, which so surprised the Russians, were not caused by their bony nature, but by the whalebones in the stays. “Il pourrait être plus poli”—“He might have been a little more polite,” observed the Markgravine. Baron Manteuffel related to me the Tsar’s interview with the Queen of Prussia: “He was so amiable that before offering her his hand he put on a rather dirty glove. At the supper he surpassed himself. He neither picked his teeth, nor belched, nor uttered any other unbecoming noises (il n’a ni roté ni peté).”
When travelling about Europe he insisted that nobody should look at him, and that the roads and streets he had to pass should be quite empty. He entered houses and went out of them by secret ways; visiting museums by night. One day, in Holland, when he was obliged to pass through a hall where the members of the States-General were sitting, he asked the president to make the whole assembly turn their backs to him as he passed; and when respect for the Tsar would not allow them to do so, he pulled his wig down to his nose, hurried through the room and antechamber, and ran down the stair.
One day, rowing on the canal at Amsterdam, and noticing a boat with inquisitive spectators attempting to approach him, he fell into such a fury that he flung two empty bottles at the steersman’s head, and nearly brained him. A real savage! A Russian demon in a civilized Europe! A savage and a child! All Russians in general are children.The Tsar only pretends to be grown up when among them. I shall never forget how, at the village fair near Wolfenbüttel, the hero of Poltava rode on the wooden horses of a second-rate roundabout, tried to catch brass hoops on a stick, and enjoyed himself like a small schoolboy. Children are cruel. The Tsar’s favourite diversion is to force people into doing something for which they have an instinctive aversion. Those who cannot stand wine, butter, cheese, oysters, or vinegar, are on every possible occasion stuffed with them by the Tsar. Those who are ticklish are tickled by him. Many, to please him, pretend that they are unable to endure what he specially delights in administering. Sometimes these jokes are fearful, especially during the festivities in the Christmas holidays, the so-called Slavleniya. This amusement, an old boyar told me, is so terrible, that many prepare for it as for death. People are dragged by ropes from one ice hole to another; others are compelled to sit on the ice bare-buttocked; others again are killed by excessive drink. This is the way a creature alien to man, a faun or a centaur would play with men, maiming them and killing them unawares.
In the anatomical theatre at Leyden he was one day watching how the exposed muscles of a body were being saturated with turpentine. Noticing a look of extreme repulsion on the face of one of his Russian companions, the Tsar took him by the collar, bent him over the table, and insisted on his tearing the muscles off the body with his teeth. At times it is almost impossible to say where childish frolic ends and the cruelty of a beast begins.
Coupled with strange awkwardness and timidity he displays savage shamelessness, especially towards women. “Il faut que Sa Majesté ait dans le corps une légion de démons de luxure.” “His Majesty must incorporate a legion of sensual devils,” says the court physician Blumentrost. He presumes that the Tsar’s scurvy is the outcome of an older ailment which had troubled him in early youth.
To quote the expression of one of the “new Russians”—“The Tsar displays a political leniency with regard to sexual immorality”—the more sinners, the more recruits, and he needs recruits. He himself considers love to beonly a natural instinct. Once during his stay in England, when a courtezan was not satisfied with her present of five hundred guineas, he said to Ménshikoff: “You think I am as great a spendthrift as yourself. For five hundred guineas old men serve me with zeal and brains, and this jade has served me damnably badly, you yourself know in what way.”
The Tsaritsa is not in the least degree jealous. He relates to her all his affairs of the heart, but always ends with the compliment, “and still you are better than the whole pack of them, Catherine!”
Strange rumours are circulated and voiced abroad with regard to the Tsar’s Denshiks. One of them, General Yagoushinsky, is supposed to have gained his master’s favours in ways which cannot be well talked about. The handsome Lefort, so says an amiable old gentleman about the Court, was so intimate with the Tsar that they had one mistress between them. It is rumoured that the Tsaritsa, before living with the Tsar, had been the mistress of Ménshikoff. Ménshikoff, in his turn, had taken in Catherine’s affections the place of Lefort. This man Ménshikoff, “risen from the mire,” who, in the Tsar’s own words, was conceived in lawlessness, born to sin, and is ending his life in rascality, has an almost inexplicable power over Peter. The Tsar will sometimes beat him like a dog, throw him to the ground, trample upon him; one would think it was all over, and yet, the next moment, they have again made peace, and are even kissing one another. I have myself heard the Tsar calling him his dear Alexasha, his own darling, and Ménshikoff returned the compliment. This ci-devant street pieman has become so insolent that he said one day to the Tsarevitch (true, he was drunk at the time), “You will see as little of the Crown as of your own ears. The crown is my property.”
October 8.
To-day, a Dutch merchant’s wife, who died of dropsy, was buried. The Tsar himself performed the operation of tapping her. They say her death was caused less by illness than by the operation. The Tsar was present at both funeral and commemoration banquet. He drank and enjoyed himself vastly. He considers himself a great surgeon.Persons about him unlucky enough to have a swelling or gathering do their best to conceal it, for fear the Tsar should begin cutting it. He has a strange liking for anatomy. He cannot see a body without having it dissected, and examines post mortem all the bodies of his relatives.
He delights in drawing teeth, having learnt the art in Holland from a travelling dentist. There is a bagful of rotten teeth extracted by the imperial forceps preserved in the Kunst-Kammer here.
In the face of suffering he displays cynical curiosity and a cynical kindheartedness. He has himself performed an intestinal operation on his page, an Arab.
His whole nature is a combination of strength and weakness. This is apparent at once even in his face: terrible eyes from which nothing escapes, one look of which suffices to make people swoon; lips, thin, delicate, almost feminine, with a cunning smile; a chin, soft, round, plump, with a dimple.
We are positively sick of hearing about the hat pierced with bullets at Poltava: I have no doubt that he can be brave, especially when victorious. All victors are brave. But has he always been as brave as it is believed?
The Saxon Engineer Hallart, who took part in the Narva campaign of 1700, tells me, that when the Tsar knew of the approach of Charles XII, he made over the command of the army to the Duc de Croy, with instructions hurriedly written, bearing neither date, nor seal, quite unintelligible, confused, and himself in great perturbation quitted the scene of action.
The Swedish prisoner, Count Pipper, has shown me a medal struck by the Swedes; on one side the Tsar is warming his hands at the fire of his cannons which are sending shells into the besieged Narva. The inscription is—“And Peter stood at the fire and warmed himself,” an allusion to the Apostle Peter in the court of the high priest! On the other side Russians are represented retreating from Narva; Peter in front, his crown tumbling from his head, his sword thrown away, wipes his tears with a handkerchief; andthe inscription runs—“And going out, he wept bitterly.”
All this may be slander; yet why has no one even dared to invent slanders about Alexander or Caesar? Something similarly strange happened during the Pruth campaign. At the most dangerous moment, just before the battle, the Tsar was about to leave the army for the rear, under pretext of bringing up fresh forces. That he did not leave was only due to the retreat being cut off. He wrote to the Senate—that never, since he had been in service, had he been in such despair. Does not this again almost justify the legend that “going out, he wept bitterly?”
Blumentrost says that doctors know more about heroes than ever will go down to posterity;—it appears the Tsar cannot endure the slightest physical pain. During a serious illness which was expected to result in death, he was anything but heroic. “It is hardly credible,” exclaimed a Russian who had been praising the Tsar in my presence, “that a great and fearless hero should be afraid of so insignificant an insect as a cockroach.” When the Tsar travels about Russia, new huts are erected for him to sleep in, as it is difficult to find in Russian villages a dwelling without cockroaches. He is also afraid of spiders and other insects. I myself once observed how at the sight of a cockroach he trembled, his face became pale and contorted, as at a ghost or some supernatural monster; another moment and he would have swooned or fallen into a fit, like a tremulous woman. O to play a trick upon him, like those he plays on others! He would probably die of fright if he were stripped and half a dozen spiders and cockroaches were let loose on him. No doubt historians would never believe that the conqueror of Charles XII died from the touch of a cockroach’s legs. This dread in the presence of a small harmless creature is astonishing in a great Tsar before whom everybody trembles. I remembered the teaching about monads by Leibnitz; it almost would seem that it was not their physical, but their metaphysical pre-existent nature, which is alien to the Tsar’s nature. His fear was not only ludicrous but awful to me: it seemed as though I had suddenly penetrated some mystery.
One day a learned German, while making experiments before the Tsaritsa with an air pump, had placed a swallowunder the glass dome. When the Tsar saw the little bird gasp, totter, and feebly flap its wings, he said:—
“Enough! Enough! don’t take away innocent life, the bird has done no harm.”
“I think her young ones are mourning for her in the nest,” added the Tsaritsa, and taking the swallow to the window she released and let it fly away.
Sentimental Peter! how strangely this sounds! And yet I saw something closely akin to sentiment flit across those delicate almost feminine lips, the plump and dimpled chin, when the Tsaritsa said in that simpering voice with mincing smile, “her young ones are mourning for her in the nest.”
Was it not on that very day that this terrible ukase was published? “His Imperial Majesty has deigned to observe that the nostrils of convicts sentenced to labour for life are only incompletely torn. His Majesty orders the nostrils to be taken off to the bone, so that in case the convicts should desert they could not hide themselves, but may easily be recognised and brought back.” And this among the Admiralty Regulations: “The body of him who commits suicide must be publicly hanged by the feet.”
“Is he cruel?” That is a question. “He who is cruel ceases to be a hero.” This is one of those sayings ascribed to the Tsar, which I do not quite believe; they seem to be uttered rather for posterity. Yet posterity will know that he, while sparing a swallow, tortured a sister to death, torments his wife, and it seems will, by degrees, murder his son.
Is he as artless as he seems? this too is doubtful. I know there are a number of stories in circulation with regard to the Tsar carpenter in Saardam. I must confess I never could listen to them without annoyance; they are too instructive, too much like pictures with explanations.
“Verstellte Einfalt;”—“Sham naïvete,” said a witty German about him. The Russians too have a proverb, “The simpleton beats the knave.”
In future all pedants and schoolchildren will certainlyknow that Tsar Peter darned his own stockings, mended his boots for economy’s sake. But it is doubtful whether they will ever be acquainted with a fact told me lately by a Russian timber merchant.
He said that a huge amount of unused oak timber was lying near Lake Ládoga, covered over with sand and rotting disused. And meanwhile men are lashed and hung for the offence of cutting down and stealing oak. Human life and blood are cheaper than oak wood. I might add, cheaper than torn stockings.
“C’est un grand poseur”—some one had said about him. One ought to watch him kiss the Prince Caesar’s hand when he has broken some buffoon’s regulation,—“Forgive, sovereign, forgive! We rough sailors are not well versed in ceremony.”
One can hardly trust one’s eyes; it is impossible to distinguish where the Tsar ends and the fool begins.
He has surrounded himself with masks. The Tsar Carpenter! ’tis a masquerade after the Dutch fashion?
And is not this new Tsar in hissimplesse, in his carpenter’s disguise, really further removed from the common people, than were the ancient Tsars of Muscovy in their cloth of gold?
“Nowadays life is very hard,” complained the same merchant to me, “nobody is allowed to say anything; the truth never reaches the Tsar. It used to be much simpler in the old days.” I once heard the chaplain Theodosius praise him to his face for the dissimulation which, it appears, political teachers are supposed to lay down as the first duty of sovereigns.
I do not judge him; I only repeat what I hear and see. All see the hero, few the man. And even if I gossip it will be forgiven me, for I am a woman. Some one has said: “This man is very good and very bad;” as for me, I must once more repeat: “I know not whether he is better or worse than other men, but it sometimes seems to me that he is not quite human.”
The Tsar is pious. He reads the Acts, and sings with as much confidence as the priests themselves, seeing he knows the lauds and liturgies by heart. He composes prayers for the soldiers.
Sometimes during a conversation about military or state affairs he suddenly lifts his eyes to heaven, crosses himself and says a short prayer with evident devotion: “O God take not Thy grace from us in the days to come!” or, “Lord grant us Thy mercy, for in Thee have we put our trust!”
This is not hypocrisy. No doubt he believes in God, as he says he puts his trust in the “Lord, strong in battle.” Yet it would seem as if his God were not the God of the Christians, but of the pagans, Mars, or Nemesis—Fate herself. Never breathed a human being less like a Christian than Peter. What connection is there between the sword of Mars and the lilies of the Gospels?
I have just read a curious new book published in Germany under the title—Curieuse Nachricht von der itzigen Religion I. K. M. in Russland Petri Alezieviz und seines grossen Reiches, dass dieselbe itzo fast nach Evangelisch-Lutherischen Grundsätzen eingerichtet sei.
Here are a few extracts from it. “We are not far wrong in stating that his Majesty’s conception of true religion takes the form of the Lutheran faith.”
“The Tsar has abolished the Patriarchate, and, following the example of Protestant Princes, he has declared himself the chief Bishop, that is Patriarch of the Russian church. On his return from a journey to foreign countries he at once entered into discussions with his priests, and being convinced of their ignorance on questions of faith—indeed they could hardly read—he instituted schools where they might apply themselves more diligently to study.
“Now that the Russians are reasonably taught and educated in schools, all the superstitious beliefs and customs must of themselves disappear, for no one, except the most ignorant and simple-minded, can believe in such things. In these schools the system of teaching is quite Lutheran, and the young people are brought up according to the rules of true Christian religion. The monasteries are reduced in number, and therefore can no longer, as in olden times, shelter great numbers of idle folk, who are a burden to the state and a danger in times of revolt. Now, the monks are obliged to learn what is useful, and everything is ordered in a praiseworthy manner. Miracles and relics no longer command the reverence they formerly did; inRussia, as in Germany, people have begun to believe that there is much swindling in connection with religious ceremonial.”
I know the Tsarevitch has read this book. What must his feelings have been during the perusal!
I was present one day when, while at their wine in the oakgrove of the Summer Garden, where the Tsar likes to converse with the clergy, the Administrator of Spiritual Affairs, the Archimandrite Theodosius, was elaborating reasons: “Why and in what sense the Roman Emperors, both pagan and Christian, termed themselves Pontifex and high priests of the polytheistic faith.” It appeared that the Tsar was the head prelate, High Priest, and Patriarch. This Russian monk very skilfully and adroitly proved that, according to “Leviathan” by the English Atheist Hobbes, the maxim “Civitatem et ecclesiam eandem rem esse”—“the state and the church are one and the same”—certainly did not advocate converting the state into a church, but on the contrary, the conversion of the church into the state. The monstrous animal—Leviathan, fabric of the state—was swallowing up the Church of God, so that there would remain no trace of it. These discussions might serve as an interesting monument of monkish cringing and flattery before the sovereign.
It is said that already at the end of last year, 1714, the Tsar called together the spiritual and lay dignitaries, to whom he solemnly declared that he wishes to be the sole head of the Russian Church, and leaves it to them to establish a spiritual association under the name of the “Holy Synod.”
The Tsar is planning a campaign against India, in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. To imitate Alexander and Caesar, to unite the East with the West, to found a new world-wide monarchy, these are the Russian Tsar’s deepest and dearest desires.
Theodosius tells the Tsar, “You are the God of the Earth,” For this is the meaning of Divus Caesar.
At the Poltava celebrations the Russian Tsar was represented on one of the allegorical pictures as Apollo, the ancient Sun-God.
I learn that the dead heads which are still on the poles near Trinity Church, opposite to the Senate-house, were the heads of Raskolniks who have been beheaded for calling the Tsar “Antichrist.”
October 20.
An old invalid, an army captain, comes sometimes into our kitchen. He is a pathetic-looking moth-eaten creature; his head trembles, his nose is red, and he has a wooden leg; he terms himself a “granary rat.” I treat him to brandy and tobacco, and we talk about Russian military affairs.
He is very cheerful and sprinkles his speech with quaint sayings, such as “A soldier serves a hundred years yet does not earn a hundred sous;” “Grain is satisfying, water intoxicating;” “Shave with an awl, warm thyself with smoke.” He has three doctors—brandy, garlic and Death.
When almost a child he became a drummer boy; he has taken part in all the campaigns from Asoff to Poltava, and has been rewarded by the Father Tsar with a handful of nuts and a kiss on the head. When speaking of the Tsar he seems to become transfigured; and to-day he told me about the battle near the Red Farm.
“We stood firm for the House of the Holy Virgin, the Serene Majesty our Tsar, and the Christian Faith; we died for one another. We all cried with a great voice: ‘Lord God! Help us!’ Then we beat the Swedish regiments, both infantry and artillery, by the help of the prayers of the saints of Holy Moscow.”
He also attempted to repeat the Tsar’s speech to his army.
“‘Children I have begotten you in the sweat of my toil. The state cannot exist without you, any more than the body without a soul. You have shown your love to God, to me, and your country; you have not spared your lives.’” The old man suddenly started up on his wooden leg, his nose grew redder yet, a tear hung on its tip like a dewdropon a ripe plum, and waving his old hat he exclaimed:
“Vivat! vivat! vivat! Peter the Great! Emperor of all the Russias!”
Up till now I had heard no one call the Tsar “Emperor,” yet I was not surprised. Such fire lit up the dim eyes of the “granary rat” that a cold shiver ran through me; a vision of ancient Rome seemed to flash before me; I heard the rustle of victorious standards, the trampling of brazen cohorts, the cries of soldiers, the acclamations of divine Caesar, ‘Divus Caesar Imperator!’
October 23.
We have been to the People’s market on the Trinity square, a long whitewashed building erected by the Italian architect Tresina; it is roofed with tiles and has arcades, such as are seen in Verona or Padua. We went into the bookshop, the first and only one in Petersburg, which has been opened by order of the Tsar; Basil Evdokimoff, a printer, is the manager. Besides books, Slavonic and translated, there are sold here calendars, decrees, primers, plans of battles, and “royal persons”; that is, portraits, and pictures of triumphant entries. The books sell badly. In the course of two or three years not a single copy of some publications has been sold. Calendars and decrees in relation to bribes sell better than anything else.
The director of the first printing press in Petersburg, a certain Avrámoff, a strange but rather clever man, whom we chanced to meet in the shop, told us how difficult it is to get the foreign books translated into Russian. The Tsar is always in a great hurry, and demands, under threat of severe lashing, that the book should be translated in an impossibly short time, intelligibly and in good style. The translators weepingly complain that it is impossible to hurry with the involved German style, which is incomprehensible, confused and heavy. Sometimes it has happened that despite incredible labour ten lines a day could not be rendered successfully. Boris Wolkoff, the translator to the foreign department, despaired of translatingLe Jardinage de Quintiny, and, fearing the Tsar’s wrath, killed himself by opening his veins.
Knowledge does not come easily to Russians.
These translations which cost so much sweat, and evenblood, are neither read nor needed by any one. Not long ago a number of books which did not sell, and which were taking up too much room in the shop, were piled up in the shed of the Armoury court. During the flood they were covered with water, and they are now spoilt, partly by damp, partly by hemp oil, which, for some inexplicable reason, has found its way among them, while many are mouse-eaten.
November 14.
We have been to the theatre. The large wooden structure, the “Comedy House,” is not far off the Foundry. The performance begins at six p.m., for which tickets, printed on stout paper, can be obtained in a separate office; the poorest seat costs forty kopecks. The audiences are scanty, and, but for the court, the actors would die of starvation. The felt on the walls does not prevent the building being cold, damp and draughty; the tallow candles smoke; the poor music is always out of tune, and, to crown all, the people in the pit noisily crack their nuts and rail at one another the whole time. The comedy of “Don Juan and Don Pedro” was the piece, a Russian translation from the German, which itself was an adaptation from the French “Don Juan.” After every act the curtain went down, leaving us in utter darkness during the scene shifting. My neighbour, chamberlain Brandenstein, was very much put out by this. He whispered to me: “Welch ein Hund von Komödie ist das?”—“What devil of a comedy is this?” I could hardly restrain my laughter. Don Juan was in the garden talking with the woman he had seduced.
“Come my love, let us recall that pleasant time when undisturbed we enjoyed the delights of spring, the green buds of love. Let our rapture be completed by the sight of these flowers and their delicious smell.”
I liked the song:
He who knows not loveKnow not what deceit is.They call a God, this loveWho torments more than death does.
He who knows not loveKnow not what deceit is.They call a God, this loveWho torments more than death does.
He who knows not love
Know not what deceit is.
They call a God, this love
Who torments more than death does.
Each act was followed by an intermezzo which generally ended in a scuffle.
Bibernstein, who had dropped asleep, had a silk handkerchiefstolen from his pocket; young Loewenwold a silver snuff-box.
Another piece followed, entitled “Daphne, pursued by the love sick Apollo, is transformed into a Laurel tree.”
Apollo threatens the nymph:
I will force thee to submit,I really cannot suffer it.
I will force thee to submit,I really cannot suffer it.
I will force thee to submit,
I really cannot suffer it.
She answers:
You so rudely do behave,That to love you I don’t crave.
You so rudely do behave,That to love you I don’t crave.
You so rudely do behave,
That to love you I don’t crave.
At this moment some drunken grooms began fighting together at the entrance. People hurried to separate them; they were whipped, and the dialogue of the God and the Nymph was drowned amid groans and ribald shouting.
At last the morning star Phosphoros announced: “The play is over, our best thanks to you, ’tis time for bed.”
We were given a manuscript programme announcing a performance in another tent: “For fifty kopecks each person will be entitled to witness the performance of ‘Doctor Faustus’ by Italian Marionettes or Dolls, two yards high, who will walk about the stage, and act almost as adroitly as living actors. The Trained Horse will perform as before.”
I must confess, I never expected to see Faustus in Petersburg, much less in the company of a learned horse!
Not long ago, at this same theatre, Molière’s “Précieuses ridicules” was performed. I procured the translation and read it. The Tsar had ordered one of his fools, the “King of the Samoyeds,” to make the translation; the translator was probably drunk when he did it, for some of the passages were quite unintelligible. Poor Molière! the monstrous galanteries of a Samoyed are as graceful as those of a white dancing bear.
November 23.
A hard frost with a piercing wind, a real ice-storm. The noses and ears of pedestrians are frostbitten before they know it. It is said that in one night 700 working men have been frozen to death between Petersburg and Kronslot.
Wolves have appeared in the streets, even in the centre of the town; a few days ago wolves fell on the sentinel atnight near the foundry, which is close to the theatre where “Daphne and Apollo” had been performed. Another soldier came to his rescue, but he too was almost instantly torn to pieces and devoured. A woman and her child have been eaten by wolves in broad daylight, not far from Prince Ménshikoff’s palace on the Basil Island.
Not less terrible than the wolves are the robbers. Sentry huts, barriers, hunting poles, sentinels with large clubs and night watches, “like those in Hamburg,” do not suffice to intimidate the robbers. Every night, either some house is broken into, or some stealthy burglary or murder takes place.
November 30.
A moist wind—and the snow and ice have melted. The mud is impassable. There is a stench of marsh, dung, and rotten fish. Epidemics abound.
December 4.
Again frost—frost without snow. It is so slippery that one runs the risk of breaking one’s neck at every step.
And these changes of temperature continue throughout the winter. Nature seems not only cruel, but positively mad.
An unnatural city! How can art and knowledge flourish? They have a saying here: “No time for luxuries—we can only just manage to live.”
December 10.
Went to an Assembly—a rout at Tolstoi’s:
Mirrors, glass, powder, beauty spots, hoop-petticoats, and curtesies and bows—just as we have in Europe, in Paris and in London.
The host himself is an amiable, learned man. He translates Ovid’sMetamorphoses, and the political advice of Niccolo Machiavelli, the noble citizen of Florence. He took me through the minuet, addressing me with compliments from Ovid. He compared me to Galatea, because of my skin, “white as marble,” and my black hair, “the colour of hyacinth”—an entertaining old gentleman! clever, yet a thorough paced knave. I will note down a few sayings of this modern Machiavelli:
“When good luck comes it is not enough to grasp it with both hands, try also to catch hold of it with your teeth and swallow it.”
“To live in high favour is like walking on a glass floor.”
“A lemon which is too much squeezed will give bitterness instead of flavour.”
“To know the human mind and character is the highest philosophy. It is more difficult to understand men than to know many books by heart.”
Listening to Tolstoi’s witty remarks—he spoke to me, now in Russian, now in Italian—to the delicate strains of the French minuet, I looked at the polite gathering of ladies and gentlemen where everything was almost the same as “in Paris or London,” yet I could not forget what I had just seen on my way thither. Before the Senate on the Trinity Square rose those gaunt poles, bearing the same heads as in May at the time of the masquerade. They dried, grew wet, froze, melted, froze again, and still they had not disappeared. A huge moon was rising from behind Trinity Church, and the black heads stood out sharply against the red glow. A crow perched on one of them, cawing and pecking at the skin. This vision was before me all the evening. Asia was casting a shadow over Europe.
The Tsar arrived; he was not in a good humour. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders in such a way as to make every one present tremble. On entering the dancing room he found it too hot, and wanted a window opened. The windows were nailed up on the outside. The Tsar ordered an axe to be brought, and together with two orderlies he set to work upon it. He ran out into the street to see how the window had been nailed up. At last he succeeded in getting the frame out. The window remained open only for a short time, and it was not cold outside; snow was again melting, and a west wind was blowing. Yet, nevertheless, it caused a strong draught in the rooms, and the lightly dressed ladies and shivery old men did not know what to do with themselves. This performance had tired Peter and had made him perspire, but he seemed in better spirits.
“Your Majesty,” said the Austrian Resident Pleyer, a very courteous gentleman, “you have broken a window into Europe.”
The seal which was used for sealing the Tsar’s letters addressed to Russia during his first journey abroad, represented a young carpenter surrounded by a shipwright’s tools and the arms of war, with the inscription:—
“I am a scholar, and what I ask for is teachers.”
Another emblem of the Tsar’s is Prometheus bringing a burning torch to men from the gods.
The Tsar says: “I will create a new race of men.”
The following story was related to me by the “granary rat.” The Tsar desires that oaks should be grown everywhere, and was himself planting some acorns near Petersburg, along the Peterhof road. Noticing that one of the bystanders, a dignitary, was smiling at his work, the Tsar angrily remarked:
“I understand; you think I shall not live to see the full-grown oaks; you are right. Nevertheless you are a fool: I set an example for others to follow, so that our descendants may one day use these trees for building ships. It is not for myself I toil; the welfare of the state comes first.”
Another story from the same source.
A decree of his Majesty commanded that all children of the nobility should matriculate in Moscow at the Soukhareva Tower for the learning of Navigation. The nobility, however, instead, enrolled their children at the Spassky monastery in Moscow to learn Latin. On hearing this the monarch was sorely angered and ordered the Governor of Moscow, Prince Romodanovsky, to take all the children from the monastery and bring them to Petersburg, where they were made to drive in piles along the Moika for the foundation of hemp sheds. The Admiral, Count Fédor Apraksin, Prince Ménshikoff, Prince James Dolgorúki, and other senators, not daring to trouble his Majesty, petitioned his Majesty’s helpmate, the Tsaritsa Catherine, on their knees, with tears in their eyes; yet it was impossible to appease his Majesty’s wrath. Then Admiral Apraksinconceived this plan: he set watchmen to let him know when the Emperor should drive past the working children. Directly they informed him that the Tsar was coming, Apraksin hurried up to the young toiling boys, took off his decoration and kaftan, hung them on a pole, and began to drive in piles with the children. The Tsar noticing the Admiral thus employed stopped and said to him:—
“Fédor Matvievitch! you are an Admiral and a Knight. Why do you drive in piles?”
To which the Admiral replied:—
“My nephews and grandsons are driving in piles, and who am I specially to enjoy the prerogatives of rank? As for the decoration granted to me by your Majesty, it hangs on the post, I have not dishonoured it.”
On hearing this the Tsar continued on his way to the palace, and twenty-four hours later he published a decree liberating the young nobles; yet at the same time he enrolled them to learn divers practical crafts and arts abroad. He was angered; and so even after driving in piles they did not escape technical instruction.
One of the few Russians, who are in sympathy with the new order of things, said to me in reference to the Tsar:—
“Whatever you look at in Russia has been started by him; and anything done in the future will be traced back to this origin. He has renewed all things, has caused Russia to be born anew.”
December 28.
The Tsarevitch has returned as unexpectedly as he went.
January 26, 1715.
We had visitors; Baron Loewenwold, the Austrian Resident Pleyer, the Hanoverian Secretary Weber, and the court physician Blumentrost. After supper, over the wine, conversation turned on the new ways introduced by the Tsar. They spoke freely, being among themselves, with no strangers or Russians present.
“The Muscovites,” said Pleyer, “do everything because they are compelled to do it. Should the Tsar die, farewell to all knowledge. Russia is a country where everythingis begun and nothing finished. The Tsar acts upon his people like strong brandy on iron; he drives knowledge into his subjects with the lash and the rod, believing in the Russian proverb: ‘the stick though dumb can teach.’ Puffendorf was right in describing this people as: ‘a servile people who humble themselves like slaves, and love to be kept in obedience by the cruelty of their rulers.’ To them would also apply the words of Aristotle, as to barbarians in general: ‘quod in libertate mali, in servitute boni sunt.’ True enlightenment inspires hatred of slavery. And the Russian Tsar is by the nature of his power a despot; what he needs are slaves. That is why he zealously introduces arithmetic, navigation, fortification, and other elementary and useful knowledge to his people; yet he will never let his subjects gain that true enlightenment which requires freedom. And, after all, he himself neither understands nor likes it; all he seeks in knowledge is utility. He prefers Perpetuum mobile, the absurd invention of Orphireus, to all the philosophy of Leibnitz. Æsop he considers to be the greatest philosopher. He has prohibited the translation of Juvenal, declaring that the composer of a single satire will be liable to the severest torture. Enlightenment stands in the same relation to the power of Russia’s Tsars as sunshine to the snow. When feeble the snow shimmers and dazzles; when strong the snow melts.”
“Who can tell,” remarked Weber with a meaning smile, “the Russians in taking Europe for their pattern may have honoured her above her deserts. Imitation is always dangerous. Vices are more easily imitated than virtues, as a Russian well expressed it. The foreign infectious corruption eats out the ancient health of Russian souls and bodies; roughness of character has lessened, but only flattery and servility have taken its place; we have outlived our old common-sense, but we have not acquired any new sense; we shall all die fools!’”
“The Tsar,” rejoined Baron Loewenwold, “is far from being the humble pupil of Europe for which many take him. One day, when French customs and temperament were highly praised in his presence, he said: ‘It is well to imitate their arts and science—as for the rest, Paris is rotten,’ andthen he added with a prophetic air, ‘I am sorry that the inhabitants of that town will perish from its corruption.’ I have not heard it myself, but I was told another saying of his which friends of Russia in Europe would do well to remember, ‘L’Europe nous est nécessaire pour quelques dizaines d’années; après quoi nous lui tournerons le dos.’—‘We need Europe for some few decades, after which we will turn our backs upon her.’”
Count Pepper gave some extracts from a book which had lately been published, “La crise du nord” about the war between Russia and Sweden, in which it was proved that the Russian victory was a sign that the end of the world was drawing nigh, and that the insignificance of Russia was necessary for the welfare of Europe. The Count also recalled the words of Leibnitz which were uttered by the great philosopher before Poltava, while he was still the friend of Sweden: “Muscovy will be a second Turkey and will open the way to new barbarisms, which will annihilate all European civilization!”
Blumentrost reassured us, saying that brandy, together with venereal diseases, which had spread with amazing rapidity during late years from Poland across to the White Sea, would depopulate Russia in less than a century. “Brandy and syphilis are, so to speak, two scourges sent by God’s providence to save Europe from a new invasion of barbarians.”
“Russia,” concluded Pleyer, “is a brazen Colossus on clay feet. It will fall and break, and nothing will remain.”
I profess no great love for the Russians myself, but I did not expect my compatriots to hate Russia so much. To me there seems behind this hatred a secret fear; as if we Germans had a presentiment that one will eventually swallow up the other, either we them, or they us.
January 17.
“Well, Fräulein Juliana, what have you decided about me? Am I fool or a knave?” The Tsarevitch stopped me this morning on the staircase with this question.
At first I could not understand what he meant, and, thinking he was drunk, I tried to pass without answering him. Yet he detained me, and continued, looking me straight in the face:—
“It will be interesting to knowwhich of us will eat up the other, you us, or we you?”
Then only did I perceive that he had read my diary. I had lent it to her Highness for a short time, as she had expressed the desire to read it; the Tsarevitch had, probably, been in her room in her absence and seeing the diary he had read it.
I was so confused, that I was ready to fall through the earth. I blushed up to the very roots of my hair, almost crying like a school-girl trapped in a fault. And he continued to scrutinise me in silence, as if delighting in my confusion. At last, making a desperate effort, I tried to escape, but he caught hold of my hand. My heart sank within me for very fear.
“Well, you have been caught, Fräulein,” he laughed in a merry, kind way. “Be more prudent in the future. It is well that I, and not somebody else, read it. Your Ladyship has a tongue as sharp as a razor, I must say, though all had their share. But, to be candid, there is much truth in what you say about us; there really is. And though you don’t pat us on the back, yet we ought to be grateful for your frankness.”
He stopped laughing, and with a bright smile he warmly squeezed my hand like a comrade, as if he were really thanking me for the truth.
A strange man. These Russians are as a rule strange beings. It is impossible to foretell what they will do or say next.
The more I think over it, the more it seems that there is something in them which we Europeans cannot, and never will be able to understand. To us they are the inhabitants of another planet.
February 2.
When passing along the corridor this evening, the Tsarevitch hearing my footsteps called, and asked me to come into the dining-room; he was alone, sitting before the hearth in the dusk. He made me sit down opposite to him, and began to talk to me, first in German, then in Russian; he spoke affectionately, as if we had been old friends. He told me things of considerable interest, but I will not put all down; it would be dangerous both for him and myselfwhile I am in Russia. Here are just a few stray thoughts.
What amazed me most of all was to find that he is in no wise such a zealous partisan of all that is old, and enemy of all that is new, as he is generally believed to be.
He repeated me a Russian proverb, “Age always commends its own baldness.” Wrong is deep seated in Russia, and unless the old edifice is taken to pieces, and every log carefully scrutinized, it will be impossible to get rid of the ancient rot and decay.
The Tsar’s fault lies in his hurry.
“My father will have everything done quickly; one, two, three, and a ship is built! He won’t see that rapidity does not always mean durability. A blow, a knock, the wheel is made. Take your seat, away we go, how delightful! Suddenly a look behind—the loose spokes are all over the ground!”
February 18.
The Tsarevitch has a note book wherein he copies passages from TheChronicles of Church and State, by Baronius, which he says apply to himself, his father and others in such a way as to illustrate the difference between what used to be and what exists now. He lent me the notes to look at. They reveal a probing and liberal mind. In reference to several legends in which the miraculous is obviously exaggerated (it is true they belonged to the Roman Catholic period) I saw annotations of this kind; “Compare with the Greek.” “Doubtful.” “This is hardly true.”
But I was most interested in those notes, in which he compared historical facts and incidents of ancient Russia and foreign nations with the Russia of to-day.
A.D.395.—“The Emperor Arcadius ordered all those who in the least degree deviated from orthodoxy to be called heretics.” (An allusion to the non-orthodoxy of the Russian Tsar.)
A.D.455.—“The Emperor Valentinian was slain for interfering with the rights of the Church as to adultery.” (An allusion to the abolition of the Patriarchate, and the Tsar’s marriage with Catherine during the lifetime of his first wife, Eudoxia Lopoukhin.)
A.D.514.—“Long coats were worn in France. Charles the Great ordered short coats. Praised be the long coats,shame upon the short ones.” (This was noted with reference to the present change of Russian dress.)
A.D.814.—“A monk induced the Emperor Leo to reject the worship of ikons.” (An allusion to the monk Theodosius, the Tsar’s chaplain, who, it is said, advises the Tsar to abolish the reverence of ikons.)
A.D.854.—“The Emperor Michael played with the Church sacraments.” (An allusion to the institution of the conclave of drunkards, the wedding of the mock Patriarch, and many other diversions of the Tsar.)
Here are a few more thoughts.
“In relation to the Papal power: Christ pronounced all His disciples equal. To say that it is impossible to be saved without the absolution of the Church is an obvious lie, for Christ said, ‘he who believes on Me shall have life everlasting,’ not on the Roman Church, which did not exist at that time. Many people were saved long before the Apostles’ preaching had even reached Rome.”
“The Mohammedan irreligion spread owing to women. Women have a liking for false prophets.” These few words, worthy of the great sceptic Beyle, reveal more about Mohammed than any of the learned researches.
Tolstoi said to me one day, with his sly foxy smile, in reference to the Tsarevitch: “The best way to gain popularity is this, in case of necessity to be able to don the skin of the stupidest of beasts.”
I did not comprehend his meaning at the time, only now am I beginning to understand.
In a work by an antique English writer—I forget his name—entitled: “The Tragedy of Hamlet the Dane,” this unhappy prince, persecuted by his enemies, pretends to be either a fool or a madman.
Is the Russian prince following Hamlet’s example? Has he not donned the hide of the simplest of the beasts?
It is rumoured that the Tsarevitch once had the courage to be candid with his father, and pleaded before him the people’s intense suffering. He has been in disgrace ever since.
February 23.
He tenderly loves his little daughter Natasha.
To-day he spent the whole of the morning sitting with her on the floor, building houses and huts out of small wooden logs. He crawled about on all fours, making believe to be a dog, a horse, a wolf. He played at ball, and when it rolled under the bed or cupboard he fetched it out again, covering himself with dust and cobwebs. He took her to his room, dandling her and showing her to everybody saying:—
“Is she not a fine girl? Where can you find another like her?”
He himself played with her like a little boy.
Natasha is clever beyond her age. When she wants to seize something forbidden and you threaten to tell her mother, she at once becomes quiet, but if you simply tell her to stop, she will begin to laugh and continue all the more. When she sees that her father is in an ill-humour she is very quiet and only gazes at him; if he turns to her she laughs loudly and waves her hands.
She fondles him like a grown up person.
I have a queer feeling when I watch her doing this. The child not only seems to love him, but also to pity him, as if she knew and saw something about him which no one else is yet aware of. It is an uncanny feeling, like that which I felt when I saw the father and mother in a dark prophetic mirror.
March 2.
“I know she loves me; she left everything for my sake,” he said once in reference to his wife.
Now that I understand the Tsarevitch better, I no longer can attach all the blame to him only for their hard life together. Both are innocent and both at fault. They are too different, too melancholy, each in their own way. Small common griefs unite, but grief great and intense divides.
They are like two persons seriously ill—wounded—lying on a bed together. They cannot help each other: and the least movement of either causes pain to both.
There are people to whom suffering has become second nature; without it they feel out of their natural element. With such persons thoughts and sentiments once havingdrooped will droop perpetually, like the branches of a weeping willow. Her Highness is one of these beings.
The Tsarevitch has much grief of his own, and every time he sees his wife, he sees another grief, a grief which cannot be allayed, so he pities her. But love and pity are not one and the same; he who wants to be loved must eschew pity. I know from personal experience what torture it is to pity where no help can be given; at last one begins to dread him for whom pity has so long proved in vain.
Yes, both are innocent, both are unhappy, and no one but God can help them. Poor, poor couple! I dread what all this may lead to; yet it were better if the end come soon.
March 7.
Her Highness is again with child.
May 12.
We are in Roshdestveno, the Crown Prince’s country house, seventy versts away from Petersburg, in the Koporsky district.
I have been ill for a long time. They thought I should die. The thought of dying in Russia was more terrible to me than death itself. Her Highness brought me here to Roshdestveno to give me a rest and chance of recovering my strength in the pure air.
Woods surround us; all is peaceful; nothing is heard save the rustling of leaves and the warbling of birds. The small river Oredesh hurries along like a torrent; its murmuring rises from beneath the steep slope of red clay, which is now shrouded in a transparent haze of young birch leaves, broken by the dark green of the firs.
The wooden country-house is built like the simple village huts. The principal hall, two stories high with a terem like the Moscow palaces, is not yet finished. Next to it stands a small chapel, with belfry and two bells, which the Tsarevitch delights in ringing himself. At the gates an old Swedish cannon and a small heap of iron balls which are covered with rust and overgrown with grass and yellow spring flowers. Altogether this is a real monastery—a kind of cloister in the woods.