The Land Of Thor Part 3

The peasant women, who flock in from the country with immense burdens of vegetables and other products of the farms, are a very striking, if not a very pleasing feature in the markets. Owing to the hard labor imposed upon them, they are exceedingly rough and brawny, and have a hard, dreary, and unfeminine expression of countenance, rather inconsistent with one's notions of the delicacy and tenderness of woman. Few of them are even pa.s.sably well-looking. All the natural playfulness of the gentler s.e.x seems to be crushed out of them; and while their manners are uncouth, their voices are the wildest and most unmusical that ever fell upon the ear from a feminine source. When dressed in their best attire they usually wear a profusion of red handkerchiefs about their heads and shoulders; and from an unpicturesque habit they have of making an upper waist immediately under their arms by a ligature of some sort, and tying their ap.r.o.n-strings about a foot below, they have the singular appearance of being double-waisted or three-story women. They carry their children on their backs, much after the fas.h.i.+on of Digger Indians, and suckle them through an opening in the second or middle story. Doubtless this is a convenient arrangement, but it presents the curious anomaly of a poor peasant living in a one-story house with a three-story wife.

According to the prevailing style of architecture in well-wooded countries, these women ought to wear their hair s.h.i.+ngled; but they generally tie it up in a knot behind, or cover it with a fancy-colored handkerchief, on the presumption, I suppose, that they look less barbarous in that way than they would with s.h.i.+ngled heads. You may suspect me of story-telling, but upon my word I think three-story women are extravagant enough without adding another to them. I only hope their garrets contain a better quality of furniture than that which afflicts the male members of the Mujik community. No wonder those poor women have families of children like steps of stairs! It is said that their husbands are often very cruel to them, and think nothing of knocking them down and beating them; but even that does not surprise me. How can a man be expected to get along with a three-story wife unless he floors her occasionally?

Ragged little boys, prematurely arrested in their growth, you see too, in myriads--shovel-nosed and bare-legged urchins of hideously eccentric manners, carrying around big bottles of _sbiteen_ (a kind of mead), which they are continually pouring out into gla.s.ses, to appease the chronic thirst with which the public seem to be afflicted; and groups of the natives gathered around a cuc.u.mber stand, devouring great piles of unwholesome-looking cuc.u.mbers, which skinny old women are dipping up out of wooden buckets. The voracity with which all cla.s.ses stow away these vicious edibles in their stomachs is amazing, and suggests a melancholy train of reflections on the subject of cholera morbus. It was a continual matter of wonder to me how the lower cla.s.ses of Russians survived the horrid messes with which they tortured their digestive apparatus. Only think of thousands of men dining every day on black bread, heavy enough for bullets, a pound or two of grease, and half a peck of raw cuc.u.mbers per man, and then expecting to live until next morning! And yet they do live, and grow fat, and generally die at a good old age, in case they are not killed in battle, or frozen up in the wilds of Siberia.

Outside the walls of the Katai Gorod, in an open square, or plaza, are rows of wooden booths, in which innumerable varieties of living stock are offered for sale--geese, ducks, chickens, rabbits, pigeons, and birds of various sorts. I sometimes went down here and bargained for an hour or so over a fat goose or a Muscovy duck, not with any ultimate idea of purchasing it, but merely because it was offered to me at a reduced price. It was amusing, also, to study the manners and customs of the dealer, and enjoy their amazement when, after causing them so much loss of time, I would hand over five kopeks and walk off.

Some of them, I verily believe, will long entertain serious doubts as to the sanity of the Californian public; for Dominico, my guide, always took particular pride in announcing that I was from that great country, and was the richest man in it, being, to the best of his knowledge, the only one who had money enough to spare to travel all the way to Moscow, merely for the fun of the thing.

I may as well mention, parenthetically, that Dominico was rather an original in his way. His father was an Italian and his mother a Russian. I believe he was born in Moscow. How he came to adopt the profession of guide I don't know, unless it was on account of some natural proclivity for an easy life. A grave, lean, saturnine man was Dominico--something of a cross between Machiavelli and Paganini. If he knew any thing about the wonders and curiosities of Moscow he kept it a profound secret. It was only by the most rigid inquiry and an adroit system of cross-examination that I could get any thing out of him, and then his information was vague and laconic, sometimes a little sarcastic, but never beyond what I knew myself. Yet he was polite, dignified, and gentlemanly--never refused to drink a gla.s.s of beer with me, and always knew the way to a traktir. To the public functionaries with whom we came in contact during the course of our rambles his air was grand and imposing; and on the subject of money he was sublimely nonchalant, caring no more for rubles than I did for kopeks. Once or twice he hinted to me that he was of n.o.ble blood, but laid no particular stress upon that, since it was his misfortune at present to be in rather reduced circ.u.mstances. Some time or other he would go to Italy and resume his proper position there. In justice to Dominico, I must add that he never neglected an opportunity of praying for me before any of the public shrines; and at the close of our acquaintance he let me off pretty easily, all things considered. Upon my explaining to him that a draft for five hundred thousand rubles, which ought to be on the way, had failed to reach me, owing, doubtless, to some irregularity in the mail service, or some sudden depression in my Washoe stocks, he merely shrugged his shoulders, took a pinch of snuff, and accepted with profound indifference a fee amounting to three times the value of his services.

I was particularly interested in the dog-market. The display of living dog-flesh here must be very tempting to one who has a taste for poodle soup or frica.s.seed pup. Dominico repudiated the idea that the Russians are addicted to this article of diet; but the very expression of his eye as he took up a fat little innocent, smoothed down its skin, squeezed its ribs, pinched its loins, and smelled it, satisfied me that a litter of pups would stand but a poor chance of ever arriving at maturity if they depended upon forbearance upon his part as a national virtue. The Chinese quarter of San Francisco affords some curious examples of the art of compounding sustenance for man out of odd materials--rats, snails, dried frogs, star-fish, polypi, and the like; but any person who wishes to indulge a morbid appet.i.te for the most disgusting dishes over devised by human ingenuity must visit Moscow. I adhere to it that the dog-market supplies a large portion of the population with fancy meats. No other use could possibly be made of the numberless squads of fat, hairless dogs tied together and hawked about by the traders in this article of traffic. I saw one man--he had the teeth of an ogre and a fearfully carnivorous expression of eye--carry around a bunch of pups on each arm, and cry aloud something in his native tongue, which I am confident had reference to the tenderness and juiciness of their flesh. Dominico declared the man was only talking about the breed--that they were fine rat-dogs; but I know that was a miserable subterfuge. Such dogs never caught a rat in this world; and if they did, it must have been with a view to the manufacture of sausages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CABINET-MAKERS.]

A Russian peasant is not particular about the quality of his food, as may well be supposed from this general summary. Quant.i.ty is the main object. Grease of all kinds is his special luxury. The upper cla.s.ses, who have plenty of money to spare, may buy fish from the Volga at its weight in gold, and mutton from Astrakan at fabulous prices; but give the Mujik his _batvina_ (salt grease and honey boiled together), a loaf of black bread, and a peck of raw cuc.u.mbers, and he is happy.

Judging by external appearances, very little grease seems to be wasted in the manufacture of soap. Indeed, I would not trust one of these Mujiks to carry a pound of soap any where for me, any more than I would a gallon of oil or a pound of candles. Once I saw a fellow grease his boots with a lump of dirty fat which he had picked up out of the gutter, but he took good care first to extract from it the richest part of its essence by sucking it, and then greasing his beard. The boots came last. In all probability he had just dined, or he would have pocketed his treasure for another occasion, instead of throwing the remnant, as he did, to the nearest cat.

In respect to the language, one might as well be dropped down in Timbuctoo as in a village or country town of Russia, for all the good the gift of speech would do him. It is not harsh, as might be supposed, yet wonderfully like an East India jungle when you attempt to penetrate it. I could make better headway through a boulder of solid quartz, or the t.i.tle to my own house and lot in Oakland. Now I profess to be able to see as far into a millstone as most people, but I can't see in what respect the Russians behaved any worse than other people of the Tower of Babel, that they should be afflicted with a language which n.o.body can hope to understand before his beard becomes grizzled, and the top of his head entirely bald. Many of the better cla.s.ses, to be sure, speak French and German; but even in the streets of Moscow I could seldom find any body who could discover a ray of meaning in my French or German, which is almost as plain as English.

Some people know what you want by instinct, whether they understand your language or not. Not so the Russians. Ask for a horse, and they will probably offer you a fat goose; inquire the way to your lodgings, and they are just as likely as not to show you the Foundling Hospital or a livery-stable; go into an old variety shop, and express a desire to purchase an Astrakan breast-pin for your sweet-heart, and the worthy trader hands you a pair of bellows or an old blunderbuss; cast your eye upon any old market-woman, and she divines at once that you are in search of a bunch of chickens or a bucket of raw cuc.u.mbers, and offers them to you at the lowest market-price; hint to a picture-dealer that you would like to have an authentic portrait of his imperial majesty, and he hands you a picture of the Iberian Mother, or St. George slaying the dragon, or the devil and all his imps; in short, you can get any thing that you don't want, and nothing that you do. If these people are utterly deficient in any one quality, it is a sense of fitness in things. They take the most inappropriate times for offering you the most inappropriate articles of human use that the imagination can possibly conceive. I was more than once solicited by the dealers in the markets of Moscow to carry with me a bunch of live dogs, or a couple of freshly-scalded pigs, and on one occasion was pressed very hard to take a bra.s.s skillet and a pair of tongs. What could these good people have supposed I wanted with articles of this kind on my travels? Is there any thing in my dress or the expression of my countenance--I leave it to all who know me--any thing in the mildness of my speech or the gravity of my manner, to indicate that I am suffering particularly for bunches of dogs or scalded pigs, bra.s.s skillets or pairs of tongs? Do I look like a man who labors under a chronic dest.i.tution of dogs, pigs, skillets, and tongs?

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIGS, PUPS, AND PANS.]

It is quite natural that the traveler who finds himself for the first time within the limits of a purely despotic government should look around him with some vague idea that he must see the effects strongly marked upon the external life of the people; that the restraints imposed upon popular liberty must be every where apparent. So far as any thing of this kind may exist in Moscow or St. Petersburg, it is a notable fact that there are few cities in the world where it is less visible, or where the people seem more unrestrained in the exercise of their popular freedom. Indeed, it struck me rather forcibly, after my experience in Vienna and Berlin, that the Russians enjoy quite as large a share of practical independence as most of their neighbors. I was particularly impressed by the bold and independent air of the middle cla.s.ses, the politeness with which even the lower orders address each other, and the absence of those petty and vexatious restraints which prevail in some of the German states. The constant dread of infringing upon the police regulations; the extraordinary deference with which men in uniform are regarded; the circ.u.mspect behavior at public places; the nice and well-regulated mirthfulness, never overstepping the strict bounds of prudence, which I had so often noticed in the northern parts of Germany, and which may in part be attributed to the naturally orderly and conservative character of the people, are by no means prominent features in the princ.i.p.al cities of Russia.

Soldiers, indeed, there are in abundance every where throughout the dominions of the Czar, and the constant rattle of musketry and clang of arms show that the liberty of the people is not altogether without limit.

CHAPTER IX.

THE NOSE REGIMENT.

I saw nothing in the line of military service that interested me more than the Imperial Guard. Without vouching for the truth of the whole story connected with the history of this famous regiment, I give it as related to me by Dominico, merely stating as a fact within my own observation that there is no question whatever about the peculiarity of their features. It seems that the Emperor Nicholas, shortly before the Crimean War, discovered by some means that the best fighting men in his dominions belonged to a certain wild tribe from the north, distinguished for the extreme ugliness of their faces. The most remarkable feature was the nose, which stood straight out from the base of the forehead in the form of a triangle, presenting in front the appearance of a double-barreled pistol. A stiff grizzly mustache underneath gave them a peculiarly ferocious expression, so that brave men quailed, and women and children fled from them in terror. The emperor gave orders that all men in the ranks possessed of these frightful noses should be brought before him. Finding, when they were mustered together, that there was not over one company, he caused a general average of the noses to be taken, from which he had a diagram carefully prepared and disseminated throughout the empire, calling upon the military commanders of the provinces to send him recruits corresponding with the prescribed formula.

In due time he was enabled to muster a thousand of these ferocious barbarians, whom he caused to be carefully drilled and disciplined. He kept them in St. Petersburg under his own immediate supervision till some time after the attack upon Sebastopol, when, finding the fortunes of war likely to go against him, he sent them down to the Crimea, with special instructions to the commander-in-chief to rely upon them in any emergency. In compliance with the imperial order, they were at once placed in the front ranks, and in a very few days had occasion to display their fighting qualities. At the very first onslaught of the enemy they stood their ground manfully till the French troops had approached within ten feet, when, with one accord, they took to their heels, and never stopped running till they were entirely out of sight.

It was a disastrous day for the Russians. The commander-in-chief was overwhelmed with shame and mortification. A detachment of cavalry was dispatched in pursuit of the fugitives, who were finally arrested in their flight and brought back. "Cowards!" thundered the enraged commander, as they stood drawn up before him; "miserable poltroons!

dastards! is this the way you do honor to your imperial master? Am I to report to his most potent majesty that, without striking one blow in his defense, you ran like sheep? Wretches, what have you to say for yourselves?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: IMPERIAL NOSEGAY.]

"May it please your excellency," responded the men, firmly and with unblenched faces, "we ran away, it is true; but we are not cowards. On the contrary, sire, we are brave men, and fear neither man nor beast.

But your excellency is aware that nature has gifted us with noses peculiarly open to unusual impressions. We have smelled all the smells known from the far North to the far South, from the stewed rats of Moscow to the carrion that lies mouldering upon the plains of the Crimea; but, if it please your highness, we never smelled Frenchmen before. There was an unearthly odor about them that filled our nostrils, and struck a mysterious terror into our souls."

"Fools!" roared the commander-in-chief, bursting with rage, "what you smelled was nothing more than garlic, to which these Frenchmen are addicted."

"Call it as you will," firmly responded the men with the noses, "it was too horrible to be endured. We are willing to die by the natural casualties of war, but not by unseen blasts of garlic, against which no human power can contend."

"Then," cried the commander, in tones of thunder, "I'll see that you die to-morrow by the natural casualties of war. You shall be put in the very front rank, and care shall be taken to have every man of you shot down the moment you undertake to run."

On the following day this rigorous order was carried into effect. The nose regiment was placed in front, and the battle opened with great spirit. The French troops swept down upon them like an avalanche. For an instant they looked behind, but, finding no hope of escape in that direction, each man of them suddenly grasped up a handful of mud, and, das.h.i.+ng it over his nostrils, shouted "Death, to the garlic-eaters!"

and rushed against the enemy with indescribable ferocity. Never before were such prodigies of valor performed on the field of battle. The French went down like stricken reeds before the ferocious onslaught of the Imperial Guard. Their dead bodies lay piled in heaps on the b.l.o.o.d.y field. The fortunes of the day were saved, and, panting and bleeding, the men of Noses stood triumphantly in the presence of their chief. In an ecstasy of pride and delight he complimented them upon their valor, and p.r.o.nounced them the brightest nosegay in his imperial majesty's service, which name they have borne ever since.

CHAPTER X.

THE EMPEROR'S BEAR-HUNT.

The present emperor, Alexander III., is more distinguished for his liberal views respecting the rights of his subjects than for his military proclivities. In private life he is much beloved, and is said to be a man of very genial social qualities. His predominating pa.s.sion in this relation is a love of hunting. I have been told that he is especially great on bears. With all your experience of this manly pastime in America, I doubt if you can form any conception of the bear-hunts in which the Autocrat of all the Russias has distinguished himself. Any body with nerve enough can kill a grizzly, but it requires both nerve and money to kill bears of any kind in the genuine autocratic style. By an imperial ukase it has been ordered that when any of the peasants or serfs discover a bear within twenty versts of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Railway, they must make known the fact to the proprietor of the estate, whose duty it is to communicate official information of the discovery to the corresponding secretary of the Czar. With becoming humility the secretary announces the tidings to his royal master, who directs him to advise the distant party that his majesty is much pleased, and will avail himself of his earliest leisure to proceed to the scene of action. In the mean time the entire available force of the estate is set to work to watch the bear, and from three to five hundred men, armed with cudgels, tin pans, old kettles, drums, etc., are stationed in a circle around him.

Dogs also are employed upon this important service. The advance trains, under the direction of the master hunter, having deposited their stores of wines, cordials, and provisions, and telegraphic communications being transmitted to head-quarters from time to time, it is at length privately announced that his imperial majesty has condescended to honor the place with his presence, and, should the saints not prove averse, will be there with his royal party at the hour and on the day specified in the imperial dispatch. The grand convoy is then put upon the track; dispatches are transmitted to all the stations; officers, soldiers, and guards are required to be in attendance to do honor to their sovereign master--privately, of course, as this is simply an unofficial affair which n.o.body is supposed to know any thing about. The emperor, having selected his chosen few--that is to say, half a dozen princes, a dozen dukes, a score or two of counts and barons--all fine fellows and genuine bloods--proceeds unostentatiously to the depot in his hunting-carriage (a simple little affair, manufactured at a cost of only forty thousand rubles or so), where he is astonished to see a large concourse of admiring subjects, gayly interspersed with soldiers, all accidentally gathered there to see him off. Now hats are removed, bows are made, suppressed murmurs of delight run through the crowd; the locomotive whizzes and fizzes with impatience; bells are rung, arms are grounded; the princes, dukes, and barons--jolly fellows as they are--laugh and joke just like common people; bells ring again and whistles blow; a signal is made, and the Autocrat of all the Russias is off on his bear-hunt!

In an hour, or two or three hours, as the case may be, the royal hunters arrive at the destined station. Should the public business be pressing, it is not improbable the emperor, availing himself of the conveniences provided for him by Winans and Co., in whose magnificent present of a railway carriage he travels, has in the mean time dispatched a fleet of vessels to Finland, ten or a dozen extra regiments of Cossacks to Warsaw, closed upon terms for a loan of fifty millions, banished various objectionable parties to the deserts of Siberia, and partaken of a game or two of whist with his camarilla.

But now the important affair of the day is at hand--the bear--the terrible black bear, which every body is fully armed and equipped to kill, but which every body knows by instinct is going to be killed by the emperor, because of his majesty's superior skill and courage on trying occasions of this sort. What a blessing it is to possess such steadiness of nerve! I would not hesitate one moment to attack the most ferocious grizzly in existence if I felt half as much confidence in my ability to kill it. But the carriages are waiting; the horses are prancing; the hunters are blowing their bugles; the royal party are mounting on horseback or in their carriages, as best may suit their taste, and the signal is given! A salute is fired by the Guard, huzzas ring through the air, and the Czar of all the Russias is fairly off on his hunt. Trees fly by; desert patches of ground whirl from under; versts are as nothing to these spirited steeds and their spirited masters, and in an hour or so the grand scene of action is reached. Here couriers stand ready to conduct the imperial hunters into the very jaws of death. The n.o.ble proprietor himself, bareheaded, greets the royal pageant; the serfs bow down in Oriental fas.h.i.+on; the das.h.i.+ng young Czar touches his hunting-cap in military style and waves his hand gallantly to the ladies of the household, who are peeping at him from their carriages in the distance. Once more the bugle is sounded, and away they dash--knights, n.o.bles, and all--the handsome and gallant Czar leading the way by several lengths. Soon the terrific cry is heard--"Halt! the bear! the bear! Halt!" Shut your eyes, reader, for you never can stand such a sight as that--a full-grown black bear, not two hundred yards off, in the middle of an open s.p.a.ce, surrounded by five hundred men hidden behind trees and driving him back from every point where he attempts to escape. You don't see the men, but you hear them shouting and banging upon their pots, pans, and kettles. Now just open one eye and see the emperor dismount from his famous charger, and deliver the rein to a dozen domestics, deliberately c.o.c.k his rifle, and fearlessly get behind the nearest tree within the range of the bear. By this time you perceive that Bruin is dancing a _pas seul_ on his hind legs, utterly confounded with the noises around him. Shut your eyes again, for the emperor is taking his royal aim, and will presently crack away with his royal rifle. Hist! triggers are clicking around you in every direction, but you needn't be the least afraid, for, although the bear is covered by a reserve of forty rifles, not one of the hunters has nerve enough to shoot unless officially authorized or personally desirous of visiting the silver-mines of Siberia. Crack! thug! The smoke clears away. By Jove! his imperial majesty has done it cleverly; hit the brute plumb on the os frontis, or through the heart, it makes no difference which.

Down drops Bruin, kicking and tearing up the earth at a dreadful rate; cheers rend the welkin; pots, pans, and kettles are banged. High above all rises the stern voice of the autocrat, calling for another rifle, which is immediately handed to him. Humanity requires that he should at once put an end to the poor animal's sufferings, and he does it with his accustomed skill.

Now the bear having kicked his last, an intrepid hunter charges up to the spot on horseback, whirls around it two or three times, carefully examines the body with an opera-gla.s.s, returns, and, approaching the royal presence with uncovered head, delivers himself according to this formula: "May it please your most gallant and imperial majesty, THE BEAR IS DEAD!" The emperor sometimes responds, "Is he?" but usually contents himself by waving his hand in an indifferent manner, puffing his cigar, and calling for his horse. Sixteen grooms immediately rush forward with his majesty's horse; and, being still young and vigorous, he mounts without difficulty, unaided except by Master of Stirrups.

Next he draws an ivory-handled revolver--a present from Colt, of New York--and, das.h.i.+ng fearlessly upon the bear, fires six shots into the dead body; upon which he coolly dismounts, and pulling forth from the breast of his hunting-coat an Arkansas bowie-knife--a present from the poet Albert Pike, of Little Rock--plunges that dangerous weapon into the bowels of the dead bear; then rising to his full height, with a dark and stern countenance, he holds the blood-dripping blade high in the air, so that all may see it, and utters one wild stentorian and terrific shout, "Harasho! harasho!" signifying in English, "Good! very well!" The cry is caught up by the princes and n.o.bles, who, with uncovered heads, now crowd around their gallant emperor, and waving their hats, likewise shout "Harasho! harasho!"--"Good! very well!"

Then the five hundred peasants rush in with their tin pans, kettles, and drums, and amid the most amazing din catch up the inspiring strain, and deafen every ear with their wild shouts of "Harasho!

harasho!"--"Good! very well!" Upon which the emperor, rapidly mounting, places a finger in each ear, and, still puffing his cigar, rides triumphantly away.

The bear is hastily gutted and dressed with flowers. When all is ready the royal party return to the railroad depot in a long procession, headed by his majesty, and brought up in the rear by the dead body of Bruin borne on poles by six-and-twenty powerful serfs. Refreshments in the mean time have been administered to every body of high and low degree, and by the time they reach the depot there are but two sober individuals in the entire procession--his royal majesty and the bear.

Farther refreshments are administered all round during the journey back to St. Petersburg, and, notwithstanding he is rigidly prohibited by his physician from the use of stimulating beverages, it is supposed that a reaction has now taken place, which renders necessary a modification of the medical ukase. At all events, I am told the bear is sometimes the only really steady member of the party by the time the imperial pageant reaches the palace. When the usual ceremonies of congratulation are over, a merry dance winds up the evening. After this the company disperses to prayer and slumber, and thus ends the great bear-hunt of his majesty the Autocrat of all the Russias.

CHAPTER XI.

RUSSIAN HUMOR.

The Russians have little or no humor, though they are not deficient in a certain grotesque savagery bordering on the humorous. There is something fearfully vicious in the royal freaks of fancy of which Russian history furnishes us so many examples. We read with a shudder of the facetious compliment paid to the Italian architect by Ivan the Terrible, who caused the poor man's eyes to be put out that he might never see to build another church so beautiful as that of St. Basil.

We can not but smile at the grim humor of Peter the Great, who, upon seeing a crowd of men with wigs and gowns at Westminster Hall, and being informed that they were lawyers, observed that he had but two in his whole empire, and he believed he would hang one of them as soon as he got home. A still more striking though less ghastly freak of fancy was that perpetrated by the Empress Anne of Courland, who, on the occasion of the marriage of her favorite buffoon, Galitzin, caused a palace of ice to be built, with a bed of the same material, in which she compelled the happy pair to pa.s.s their wedding night. The Empress Catharine II., a Pomeranian by birth, but thoroughly Russian in her morals, possessed a more ardent temperament. What time she did not spend in gratifying her ambition by slaughtering men, she spent in loving them:

"For, though she would widow all Nations, she liked man as an individual."

She never dismissed an old admirer until she had secured several new ones, and generally consoled those who had served her by a present of twenty or thirty thousand serfs. On the death of Lanskoi, it is recorded of her that "she gave herself up to the most poignant grief, and remained three months without going out of her palace of Czarsko Selo," thus perpetrating a very curious practical satire upon the holiest of human affections. Her grenadier lover Potemkin, according to the character given of him by the Count Segur, was little better than a gigantic and savage buffoon--licentious and superst.i.tious, bold and timid by turns--sometimes desiring to be King of Poland, at others a bishop or a monk. Of him we read that "he put out an eye to free it from a blemish which diminished his beauty. Banished by his rival, he ran to meet death in battle, and returned with glory." Another pleasant little jest was that perpetrated by Suwarrow, who, after the b.l.o.o.d.y battle of Tourtourskaya, announced the result to his mistress in an epigram of two doggerel lines. This was the terrible warrior who used to sleep almost naked in a room of suffocating heat, and rush out to review his troops in a linen jacket, with the thermometer of Reaumur ten degrees below freezing point. Of the Emperor Paul, the son of Catharine, we read that he issued a ukase against the use of shoe-strings and round hats; caused all the watch-boxes, gates, and bridges throughout the empire to be painted in the most glaring and fantastic colors, and pa.s.sed a considerable portion of his time riding on a wooden rocking-horse--a degenerate practice for a scion of the bold Catharine, who used to dress herself in men's clothes, and ride a-straddle on the back of a live horse to review her troops. Alexander I., in his ukase of September, 1827, perpetrated a very fine piece of Russian humor. The period of military service for serfs is fixed at twenty years in the Imperial Guard, and twenty-two in other branches of the service. It is stated in express terms that the moment a serf becomes enrolled in the ranks of the army he is free! But he must not desert, for if he does he becomes a slave again. This idea of freedom is really refres.h.i.+ng. Only twenty or twenty-two years of the gentle restraints of Russian military discipline to be enjoyed after becoming a free agent! Then he may go off (at the age of fifty or sixty, say), unless disease or gunpowder has carried him off long before, to enjoy the sweets of hard labor in some agreeable desert, or the position of a watchman on the frontiers of Siberia, where the climate is probably considered salubrious.

These may be considered royal or princely vagaries, in which great people are privileged to indulge; but I think it will be found that the same capricious savagery of humor--if I may so call it--prevails to some extent among all cla.s.ses of Russians. In some instances it can scarcely be a.s.sociated with any idea of mirthfulness, yet in the love of strange, startling, and incongruous ideas there is something bordering on the humorous. On Recollection Monday, for example, the ma.s.s of the people go out into the grave-yards, and, spreading table-cloths on the mounds that cover the dead bodies of their relatives, drink qua.s.s and vodka to the health of the deceased, saying, "Since the dead are unable to drink, the living must drink for them!" Rather a grave excuse, one must think, for intoxication.

In the museum of Peter the Great at St. Petersburg stands the stuffed skin of his favorite servant--a gigantic Holsteiner--one of the most ghastly of all the grotesque and ghastly relics in that remarkable inst.i.tution. It is not a very agreeable subject for the pencil of an artist, yet there is something so original in the idea of stuffing a human being and putting him up for exhibition before the public that I am constrained to introduce the following sketch of this strange spectacle.

In one of the a.r.s.enals is an eagle made of gun-flints, with swords for wings, daggers for feathers, and the mouths of cannons for eyes. A painting of the Strelitzes, in another, represents heaven as containing the Russian priests and all the faithful; while the other place--a region of fire and brimstone--contains Jews, Tartars, Germans, and negroes!