Ten Years' Exile Part 11

I went to see the establishments for education, founded by the empress, and there, even more than in the palaces, my anxiety was redoubled; for the breath of Bonaparte's tyranny is sufficient, if it approach inst.i.tutions tending to the improvement of the human race, to alter their purity. The inst.i.tute of St. Catherine is formed of two houses, each containing two hundred and fifty young ladies of the n.o.bility and citizens; they are educated under the inspection of the empress, with a degree of care that even exceeds what a rich family would pay to its own children. Order and elegance are remarkable in the most minute details of this inst.i.tute, and the sentiment of the purest religion and morality there presides over all that the fine arts can develope. The Russian females have so much natural grace, that on entering the hall where all the young ladies saluted us, I did not observe one who did not give to this simple action all the politeness and modesty which it was capable of expressing. They were invited to exhibit us the different kinds of talent which distinguished them, and one of them, who knew by heart pieces of the best French authors, repeated to me several of the most eloquent pages of my father's Course of Religious Morals. This delicate attention probably came from the empress herself. I felt the most lively emotion in hearing that language uttered, which for so many years had had no asylum but in my heart. Beyond the empire of Bonaparte, in all countries posterity commences, and justice is shown towards those who even in the tomb, have felt the attack of his imperial calumnies. The young ladies of the inst.i.tute of St.

Catherine, before sitting down to table, sung psalms in chorus: this great number of voices, so pure and sweet, occasioned me an emotion of tender feeling mingled with bitterness. What would war do, in the midst of such peaceable establishments? Where could these doves fly to, from the arms of the conqueror? After this meal, the young ladies a.s.sembled in a superb hall, where they all danced together.

There was nothing striking in their features as to beauty, but their gracefulness was extraordinary; these were daughters of the East, with all the decency which Christian manners have introduced among women. They first executed an old dance to the tune of Long live Henry the Fourth, Long live this valiant King! What a distance there was between the times which this tune reminded one of, and the present period! Two little chubby girls of ten years old finished the ballet by the Russian step: this dance sometimes a.s.sumes the voluptuous character of love, but executed by children, the innocence of that age was mingled with the' national originality. It is impossible to paint: the interest inspired by these amiable talents, cultivated by the delicate and generous hand of a female and a sovereign.

An establishment for the deaf and dumb, and another for the blind, are equally under the inspection of the empress. The emperor, on his side, pays great attention to the school of cadets, directed by a man of very superior understanding, General Klinger. All these establishments are truly useful, but they might be reproached with being too splendid. At least it would be desirable to found in different parts of the empire, not schools so superior, but establishments which would communicate elementary instruction to the people. Every thing has commenced in Russia by luxury, and the building has, it may be said, preceded the foundation. There are only two great cities in Russia, Petersburg and Moscow; the others scarcely deserve to be mentioned; they are besides separated at very great distances: even the chateaux of the n.o.bility are at such distances from each other, that it is with difficulty the proprietors can communicate with each other. Finally, the inhabitants are so dispersed in this empire, that the knowledge of some can hardly be of use to others. The peasants can only reckon by means of a calculating machine, and the clerks of the post themselves follow the same method. The Greek popes have much less knowledge than the Catholic curates, or the Protestant ministers; so that the clergy in Russia are really not fit to instruct the people, as in the other countries of Europe. The great bond of the nation is in religion and patriotism; but there is in it no focus of knowledge, the rays of which might spread over all parts of the empire, and the two capitals have not yet learned to communicate to the provinces what they have collected in literature and the fine arts. If this country could have remained at peace, it would have experienced all sorts of improvement under the beneficent reign of Alexander. But who knows if the virtues which this war has developed, may not be exactly those which are likely to regenerate nations?

The Russians have not yet had, up to the present time, men of genius but for the military career; in all other arts they are only imitators; printing, however, has not been introduced among them more than one hundred and twenty years. The other nations of Europe have become civilized almost simultaneously, and have been able to mingle their natural genius with acquired knowledge; with the Russians this mixture has not yet operated. In the same manner as we see two rivers after their junction, flow in the same channel without confounding their waters, in the same manner nature and civilization are united among the Russians without identifying the one with the other: and according to circ.u.mstances the same man at one time presents himself to you as a European who seems only to exist in social forms, and at another time as a Sclavonian who only listens to the most furious pa.s.sions. Genius will come to them in the fine arts, and particularly in literature, when they shall have found out the means of infusing their real disposition into language, as they show it in action.

I witnessed the performance of a Russian tragedy, the subject of which was the deliverance of the Muscovites, when they drove back the Tartars beyond Casan. The prince of Smolensko appeared in the ancient costume of the boyars, and the Tartar army was called the golden horde. This piece was written almost entirely according to the rules of the French drama; the rhythm of the verses, the declamation, and the division of the scenes, was entirely French; one situation only was peculiar to Russian manners, and that was the profound terror which the dread of her father's curse has inspired in a young female. Paternal authority is almost as strong among the Russians as among the Chinese, and it is always among the people that we must seek for the germ of national character. The good company of all countries resembles each other, and nothing is so unfit as that elegant world to furnish subjects for tragedy. Among all those which the history of Russia presents, there is one by which I was particularly struck. Ivan the Terrible, already old, was besieging NovoroG.o.d. The boyars seeing him very much enfeebled, asked him if he would not give the command of the a.s.sault to his son. His rage at this proposition was so great, that nothing could appease him; his son prostrated himself at his feet, but he repulsed him with a blow of such violence, that two days after the unfortunate prince died of it. The father, then reduced to despair, became equally indifferent to war and to power, and only survived his son a few months. This revolt of an old despot against the progress of time has in it something grand and solemn, and the melting tenderness which succeeds to the paroxysm of rage in that ferocious soul, represents man as he comes from the hand of nature, now irritated by selfishness, and again restrained by affection.

A law of Russia inflicted the same punishment on the person who lamed a man in the arm as on one who killed him. In fact, man in Russia is princ.i.p.ally valuable by his military strength; all other kinds of energy are adapted to manners and inst.i.tutions which the present state of Russia has not yet developed. The females at Petersburg, however, seemed to be penetrated with that patriotic honor which const.i.tutes the moral power of a state. The princess Dolgoronki, the baroness Strogonoff, and several others equally of the first rank, already knew that a part of their fortunes had suffered greatly by the ravaging of the province of Smolensko, and they appeared not to think of it otherwise than to encourage their equals to sacrifice every thing like them. The princess Dolgorouki related to me that an old long-bearded Russian, seated on an eminence overlooking Smoleusko, thus, in tears, addressed his little grandson, whom he held upon his knees: "Formerly, my child, the Russians went to gain victories at the extremity of Europe; now, strangers come to attack them in their own homes." The grief of this old man was not vain, and we shall soon see how dearly his tears have been purchased.

CHAPTER 20.

Departure for Sweden.--Pa.s.sage through Finland.

The emperor quitted Petersburg, and I learned that he was gone to Abo, where he was to meet General Bernadotte, Prince Royal of Sweden. This news left no farther doubt about the determination of that prince to take part in the present war, and nothing could be more important at that moment for the salvation of Russia, and consequently for that of Europe We shall see the influence of it developed in the sequel of this narrative. The news of the entrance of the French into Smolensko arrived during the conferences of the prince of Sweden with the emperor of Russia; and it was there that Alexander contracted the engagement with himself and the Prince Royal, his ally, never to sign a treaty of peace. "Should Petersburg be taken," said he, "I will retire into Siberia. I will there resume our ancient customs, and like our long-bearded ancestors, we will return anew to conquer the Empire." "This resolution will liberate Europe," exclaimed the Prince Royal, and his prediction begins to be accomplis.h.i.+ng.

I saw the Emperor Alexander a second time upon his return from Abo, and the conversation I had the honor of holding with him, satisfied me to that degree of the firmness of his determination, that in spite of the capture of Moscow, and all the reports which followed it, I firmly believed that he would never yield. He was so good as to tell me, that after the capture of Smolensko, Marshal Berthier had written to the Russian commander in chief respecting some military matters, and terminated his letter by saying that the Emperor Napoleon always preserved the tenderest friends.h.i.+p for the Emperor Alexander, a stale mystification which the emperor of Russia received as it deserved. Napoleon had given him some lessons in politics, and lessons in war, abandoning himself in the first to the quackery of vice, and in the second to the pleasure of exhibiting a disdainful carelessness. He was deceived in the Emperor Alexander; he had mistaken the n.o.bleness of his character for dupery; he had not been able to perceive that if the emperor of Russia had allowed himself to go too far in his enthusiasm for him, it was because he believed him a partizan of the first principles of the French revolution, which agreed with his own opinions; but never had Alexander the idea of a.s.sociating with Napoleon to reduce Europe to slavery. Napoleon thought in that, as well as in all other circ.u.mstances, to succeed in blinding a man by a false representation of his interest; but he encountered conscience, and his calculations were entirely baffled; for that is an element, of the strength of which he knows nothing, and which he never allows to enter into his combinations.

Although General Barclay de Tolly was a military man of great reputation, yet as he had met with reverses at the beginning of the campaign, the general opinion designated as his successor, a general of great renown, Prince Kutusow; he took the command fifteen days before the entry of the French into Moscow, but he got to the army only six days before the great battle which took place almost at the gates of that city, at Borodino. I went to see him the day before his departure; he was an old man of the most graceful manners, and lively physiognomy, although he had lost an eye by one of the numerous wounds he had received in the course of a fifty years'

service. On looking at him, I was afraid that he had not sufficient strength to struggle with the rough young men who were pouncing upon Russia from all corners of Europe: but the Russian courtiers at Petersburg become Tartars at the army: and we have seen by Suwarow that neither age nor honors can enervate their physical and moral energy. I was moved at taking leave of this ill.u.s.trious Marshal Kutusow; I knew not whether I was embracing a conqueror or a martyr, but I saw that he had the fullest sense of the grandeur of the cause in which he was employed. It was for the defence, or rather for the restoration of all the moral virtues which man owes to Christianity, of all the dignity he derives from G.o.d, of all the independence which he is allowed by nature; it was for the rescuing of all these advantages from the clutches of one man, for the French are as little to be accused as the Germans and Italians who followed his train, of the crimes of his armies. Before his departure, Marshal Kutusow went to offer up prayers in the church of Our Lady of Casan, and all the people who followed his steps, called out to him to be the saviour of Russia. What a moment for a mortal being! His age gave him no hope of surviving the fatigues of the campaign; but there are moments when man has a wish to die for the satisfaction of his soul. Certain of the generous opinions and of the n.o.ble conduct of the Prince of Sweden, I was more than ever confirmed in the resolution of going to Stockholm, previous to embarking for England; towards the end of September I quitted Petersburg to repair to Sweden through Finland. My new friends, those whom a community of sentiment had brought about me, came to bid me adieu; Sir Robert Wilson, who seeks every where an opportunity of fighting, and inflaming his friends by his spirit: M. de Stein, a man of antique character, who only lived in the hope of seeing the deliverance of his country; the Spanish envoy; and the English minister, Lord Tyrconnel; the witty Admiral Bentinck; Alexis de Noailles, the only French emigrant from the imperial tyranny, the only one who was there, like me, to bear witness for France; Colonel Dornberg, that intrepid Hessian whom nothing has turned from the object of his pursuit; and several Russians, whose names have been since celebrated by their exploits. Never was the fate of the world exposed to greater dangers; no one dared to say so, but all knew it: I only, as a female, was not exposed to it; but I might reckon what I had suffered as something. I knew not in bidding adieu to these worthy knights of the human race, which of them I should ever see again, and already two of them are no longer in existence. When the pa.s.sions of man rouse man against his fellows, when nations attack each other with fury, we recognize, with sorrow, human destiny in the miseries of humanity; but when a single being, similar to the idols of the Laplanders, to whom the incense of fear is offered up, spreads misery over the earth in torrents, we experience a sort of superst.i.tious fear which leads us to consider all honorable persons as his victims.

On entering into Finland, every thing indicates that you have pa.s.sed into another country, and that you have to do with a very different race from the Sclavonians. The Finns are said to come immediately from the North of Asia; their language also is said to have no resemblance to the Swedish, which is an intermediate one between the English and the German. The countenances of the Finns, however, are generally perfectly German: their fair hair, and white complexions, bear no resemblance to the vivacity of the Russian countenance; but their manners are also much milder; the common people have a settled probity, the result of protestant instruction, and purity of manners. On Sundays, the young women are seen returning from sermon on horseback, and the young men following them. You will frequently receive hospitality from the pastors of Finland, who regard it as their duty to give a lodging to travellers, and nothing can be more pure or delightful than the reception you meet with in those families; there are scarcely any n.o.blemens' seats in Finland, so that the pastors are generally the most important personages of the country. In several Finnish songs, the young girls offer to their lovers to sacrifice the residence of the pastor, even if it was offered to them to share. This reminds me of the expression of a young shepherd, "If I was a king, I would keep my sheep on horseback." The imagination itself scarcely goes beyond what is known.

The aspect of nature is very different in Finland to what it is in Russia; in place of the marshes and plains which surround St.

Petersburg, you find rocks, almost mountains, and forests: but after a time, these mountains, and those forests, composed of the same trees, the fir and the birch, become monotonous. The enormous blocks of granite which are seen scattered through the country, and on the borders of the high roads, give the country an air of vigor; but there is very little life around these great bones of the earth, and vegetation begins to decrease from the lat.i.tude of Finland to the last degree of the animated world. We pa.s.sed through a forest half consumed by fire; the north winds which add to the force of the flames, render these fires very frequent, both in the towns and in the country. Man has in all ways great difficulty in maintaining the struggle with nature in these frozen climates. You meet with few towns in Finland, and those few are very thinly peopled. There is no centre, no emulation, nothing to say, and very little to do, in a northern Swedish or Russian province, and during eight months of the year, the whole of animated nature is asleep.

The Emperor Alexander possessed himself of Finland after the treaty of Tilsit, and at a period when the deranged intellects of the monarch who then reigned in Sweden, Gustavus IV., rendered him incapable of defending his country. The moral character of this prince was very estimable, but from his infancy, he had been sensible himself that he could not hold the reins of government. The Swedes fought in Finland with the greatest courage; but without a warlike chief on the throne, a nation which is not numerous cannot triumph over a powerful enemy. The Emperor Alexander became master of Finland by conquest, and by treaties founded on force; but we must do him the justice to say, that he treated this new province very well, and respected the liberties she enjoyed. He allowed the Finns all their privileges relative to the raising of taxes and men; he sent very generous a.s.sistance to the towns which had been burnt, and his favors compensated to a certain extent what the Finns possessed as rights, if free men can ever accede voluntarily to that sort of exchange. Finally, one of the prevailing ideas of the nineteenth century, natural boundaries, rendered Finland as necessary to Russia, as Norway to Sweden; and it must be admitted as a truth, that wherever these natural limits have not existed, they have been the source of perpetual wars.

I embarked at Abo, the capital of Finland. There is an university in that city, and they make some attempts in it to cultivate the intellect: but the vicinity of the bears and wolves during the winter is so close, that all ideas are absorbed in the necessity of ensuring a tolerable physical existence; and the difficulty which is felt in obtaining that in the countries of the north, consumes at great part of the time which' is elsewhere consecrated to the enjoyment of the intellectual arts. As some compensation, however, it may be said that the very difficulties with which nature surrounds men give greater firmness to their character, and prevent the admission into their mind of all the disorders occasioned by idleness. I could not help, however every moment regretting those rays of the South which had penetrated to my very soul.

The mythological ideas of the inhabitants of the North are constantly representing to them ghosts and phantoms; day is there equally favorable to apparitions as night; something pale and cloudy seems to summon the dead to return to the earth, to breathe the cold air, as the tomb with which the living are surrounded. In these countries the two extremities are generally more conspicuous than the intermediate ones; where men are entirely occupied with conquering their existence from nature, mental labors very easily become mystical, because man draws entirely from himself, and is in no degree inspired by external objects.

Since I have been so cruelly persecuted by the Emperor, I have lost all kind of confidence in destiny; I have however a stronger belief in the protection of providence, but it is not in the form of happiness on this earth. The result is, that all resolutions terrify me, and yet exile obliges me frequently to adopt some. I dreaded the sea, although every one said, all the world makes this pa.s.sage, and no harm happens to any one. Such is the language which encourages almost all travellers: but the imagination does not allow itself to be chained by this kind of consolation, and that abyss, from which so slight an obstacle separates you, is always tormenting to the mind. Mr. Schlegel saw the terror I felt about the frail vessel which was to carry us to Stockholm. He showed me, near Abo, the prison in which one of the most unfortunate kings of Sweden, Eric XIV. had been confined some time before he died in another prison near Gripsholm. "If you were confined there," he said to me, "how much would you envy the pa.s.sage of this sea, which at present so terrifies you." This just reflection speedily gave another turn to my ideas, and the first days of our voyage were sufficiently pleasant. We pa.s.sed between the islands, and although there was more danger close to the land than in the open sea, one never feels the same terror which the sight of the waves appearing to touch the sky makes one experience. I made them show me the land in the horizon, as far as I could perceive it; infinity is as fearful to the sight as it is pleasant to the soul. We pa.s.sed by the isle of Aland, where the plenipotentiaries of Peter I. and Charles XII. negociated a peace, and endeavored to fix boundaries to their ambition in this frozen part of the world, which the blood of their subjects alone had been able to thaw for a moment. We hoped to reach Stockholm the following day, but a decidedly contrary wind obliged us to cast anchor by the side of an island entirely covered with rocks interspersed with trees, which hardly grew higher than the stones which surrounded them. We hastened, however, to take a walk on this island, in order to feel the earth under our feet.

I have always been very subject to ennui, and far from knowing how to occupy myself at those moments of entire leisure which seem destined for study.

Here the ma.n.u.script breaks off.

After a pa.s.sage which was not without danger, my mother was landed safely at Stockholm. She was received in Sweden with the greatest kindness, and spent eight months there, and it was there she wrote the present journal. Shortly after, she departed for London, and there published her work on Germany, which the Imperial police had suppressed. But her health, already cruelly affected by Bonaparte's persecutions, having suffered from the fatigues of a long voyage, she felt herself obliged without farther delay to undertake the history of the political life of her father, and to adjourn to a future period all other labors, until she had finished that which her filial affection made her regard as a duty. She then conceived the plan of her Considerations on the French Revolution. That work even she was not spared to finish, and the ma.n.u.script of her Ten Years' Exile remained in her portfolio in the state in which I now publish it.

(End of Note by the Editor.)