CHAPTER IV
Notwithstanding the sunny day, it was quite dark in the room, and the candles were burning. Not a ray could find its way through the windows, blocked up with felt, hung with tapestries. The close air was saturated with calamite, yarrow brandy, rose water, and perfumes added to the fuel for scent. The room was crowded with seats, dressers, cupboards, boxes, hampers, chests, coffers, treasure chests bound with strips of iron, cypress-wood trunks filled with various furs, dresses and linen: “the white treasury.” In the middle of the room towered the Tsaritsa’s bed, overhung by a canopy, the bed-curtain made of red satin, interwoven with a pale green and gold design, with a quilt of gold embossed tissue, lined with sable and surrounded by a border of ermine. Everything was sumptuous, but old, worn and dilapidated, and looked as though it would crumble into dust at the first breath of fresh air. Through the open door a glimpse of the private chapel could be caught; it was flooded by the light of lamps, which burned before the images, trimmed with gold and silver, and studded with priceless gems. Here numerous relics were kept: crosses, panagias, triptychs, little boxes, shrines with relics, myrrh, leaven, miracle-working ointments, holy water in waxed cloths, saucers of cassia; holy chrism in lead vessels, blessed by Patriarchs; tapers lit with fire from heaven; sand from the Jordan; bits of the burning bush, and the oak of Mamre; some of the Holy Virgin’s milk; an azure stone—part of the sky on which Christ had stood; a stone in a cloth case “diffusing a perfume, but what sort of stone is unknown.” Other treasures were the leg wrappers of Paphnuti Borovsky; a tooth of Antipas the Great, a charm against toothache which Ivan the Terrible had appropriated from the reliquary of his murdered son.
Tsaritsa Martha was sitting near the bed, in a gilt arm-chair, which resembled a throne, with a double-crested eagle and crown carved on the back. Although the green glazed stove, richly ornamented with festoons and mouldings, had been well heated, the sickly, shivering old woman wrapped herself in a warm jacket, lined with Arctic fox. A pearl fringe and strings hung over her forehead, from under the golden headgear. Her face was not old, but it seemed lifeless as stone. According to the old custom of Muscovy’s Tsaritsas, white and rouge were thickly laid on her face, and made it yet more lifeless. Only the eyes seemed alive; they were transparently lucid, but with a curious blind look resembling that of night birds in daylight.
A monk sat at her feet on the floor relating something to her.
When the Tsarevitch and his aunt came in, the Tsaritsa Martha greeted them kindly, and invited them to listen to this pilgrim of God. He was of small stature, and had a child-like, cheerful face; his voice, too, was cheerful, melodious and pleasant. He was describing his pilgrimages, the settlements of monks on Athos and Solovki; he compared the Russian monastery with the Greek and gave the preference to the Greek.
“The monastery on Mount Athos is called the garden of the Holy Virgin, and the Holy Mother herself is ever beholding it from the heavens, she provides for, and keeps it from destruction. And with her help the settlement flourishes, and brings forth visible and invisible fruit; the visible fruit is fair, the invisible is that of souls saved. And any one, who has once penetrated within the garden, the forecourt of Paradise, and has beheld its nature and beauty, will not, I believe, have any desire to leave it. The air is pure, and the high hills and mountains, the warmth and light of the sun, the variety of trees and fruits, and the nearness of the longed-for land, Jerusalem, maintain a perpetual joy.
“The Solovetzky Isle on the contrary inspires fear and exasperation; it is melancholy, dark, and cold as Tartarus.
“There are features about that island which harm the soul. Sea-gulls, white birds, live there in great numbers; all the summer long they multiply, breed and build their nests on the ground near the paths, along which the monks go to church. And great is the mischief caused by these birds to the monks. First they lose their tranquillity. Secondly, watching the birds play and flutter and pair, they delight in it, and their passions are aroused. Thirdly, women, maidens, and nuns often visit the monastery.
“Mount Athos is free from any such temptations; neither seagulls nor women come near it. One woman only floating on the wings of an eagle, the holy Church, soars over that delightful desert, until the fulness of time appointed by the Lord shall be reached; and to Him be glory for ever and ever—Amen.”
When he had finished, the Tsaritsa begged all to leave the room, even Marya; and remained alone with Alexis.
She scarcely knew him, and could not remember what relationship existed between them; even his name she repeatedly forgot, and simply called him grandson. Yet she loved and pitied him with a strange prophetic pity, as if his fate, unknown to himself, were revealed to her.
She looked at him for a long time in silence, with her lucid motionless gaze, which seemed to be dimmed by a film, like the eyes of nightbirds. Then she sadly smiled, and began to gently stroke his face and hair with her hand.
“My poor orphan! neither father nor mother to protect thee! The cruel wolves will devour the lamb; the black crows will peck the white dove to death. I am sorry for thee, my loved one; thou wilt not live long.”
These wandering words of the last Tsaritsa, who seemed here in Petersburg a pathetic phantom of ancient Muscovy, this decaying splendour, this quiet warm room, where time seemed at a standstill, all filled Alexis’ soul with the chill of death, and memories of his fair distant childhood. He felt a sweet melancholy pain gnawing at his heart. He kissed the pale meagre hand, with its thin fingers, from which the ancient, heavy royal rings kept dropping off. She bent her head, as if musing, turning over her coral beads; beads which ward off evil spirits, for coral grows in the shape of a cross.
“Everything, everything is troubled; times are growing evil!” she again began with increasing alarm. “Have you read, grandson, in the Scriptures: ‘Children, these are the last days? Have you heard he is coming and is already in the world’? This has been said about him, the son of Perdition. He is already at the threshold, soon will he come in! I can’t tell whether I shall live to see my beloved, my fair sun, the pious Tsar Fédor. Could I but just look at him, if only a glance when he comes in power and glory to wage war with the unfaithful, and having conquered them will sit on the throne of glory, and all the people will bow before him saying: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
Her eyes brightened up, but in the next moment a dull film seemed to come over them, like ashes over live charcoal.
“Ah! No, I shall not live to see him. I have provoked God’s wrath. My heart has a presentiment that trouble is coming. I am sick at heart, grandson. And my dreams have been ill-omened of late.”
She furtively glanced round, then bringing her lips to his ear, she whispered:
“Do you know, grandson, what I dreamt quite recently? Whether it was a dream or a vision, I can’t tell for certain, but he, he, himself, none other than himself, came to me.”
“Who, Tsaritsa?” asked Alexis.
“Don’t you understand? Don’t you see it? Listen then, grandson, how it was I dreamt that dream. Perhaps you will then understand. It seemed to me, as if I were lying on this very bed, as it were expecting something. Suddenly the door was thrown open, and he appeared. I at once recognised him. Tall, stout, a short foreign coat, in his mouth a pipe; his face clean shaven, with whiskers like a cat. He came up, looked at me and remained silent. I also kept silent, waiting for what would happen next; I felt so sick at heart, so weary—— I tried to cross myself; but could not lift my hand; I tried to recite a prayer, my tongue would not move. I lay there, as if dead. He took my hand, and felt it; I shuddered. I glanced at the holy image, the image too seemed to have taken a new shape: it was no longer the blessed Saviour, but an unclean German, with bloated blue face, like that of a drowned man. And meanwhile I heard him saying to me:—
“‘You are sorely ill, Martha. Would you like me to send you my doctor? Why are you staring at me like this? Do you not recognise me?’ I answered, ‘How could I fail to recognise you? I know you—I have seen many like you.’ ‘Well, if you know me tell me who I am,’ said he. ‘There is no mistaking who you are: a foreigner, a foreigner’s son, a drummer.’ Upon this he grinned and chuckled like a mad tom cat. ‘You are completely gone mad, old woman, that is quite evident. I am neither a foreigner, nor a drummer, but the divinely anointed Tsar of all the Russias, your own dead husband’s, the Tsar Fédor’s, stepbrother.’ Now I was roused, I could hardly restrain myself from spitting in his face, and calling: ‘Thou dog! cur’s pup; pretender, Gregory Otriópieff, anathema, this is who thou art!’ But then, ‘it isn’t worth while,’ thought I, ‘why should I rail at him? He is not even worth spitting on. It is but a dream, an evil apparition, which by God’s will, I am now enduring. I’ll just blow with my lips and it will all disappear and disperse.’ ‘And if you are the Tsar,’ said I, ‘What is your name?’
“‘Peter is my name,’ he answered. When I heard the name ‘Peter,’ it was as though a light had flashed upon me. ‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘is this who you are? well, just wait.’ And seeing my tongue would not move, I, not being a fool, began in my mind to recite the holy adjuration.
“‘Satan! thou fiend, get thee away from me, into empty space, thick forests, deep precipices, into bottomless seas, upon prodigious, uninhabited hills, on which the glory of God’s face never shines. Cursed! disappear from me into Tartarus, bottomless hell, the infernal regions of Gehenna. Amen! Amen! Amen! I blow at thee, I spit on thee.’ When I had finished my imprecation, he had disappeared: the earth seemed to have engulfed him, not a trace of him was left, only a smell of tobacco. I awoke, cried out. In hurried Soundóuleya Vahrameyevna, sprinkled me with holy water, burnt some incense; I got up, walked into the chapel, fell down before the holy Queen, only then having remembered and thought it over, I realized who he had been.”
While she was speaking the Tsarevitch gradually realised that it was his father who had been to see her, not in a dream, but in reality. At the same time the maundering of the woman seemed to catch hold of and infect him.
“Well, and who was it, Tsaritsa?” he repeated with a trembling yet eager curiosity.
“Don’t you see? Have you forgotten what is said in Ephraim’s book, about the second coming, ‘there shall come a proud prince of this world, under the name of Simon Peter, who shall be the Antichrist.’ Do you hear, his name is Peter? It is he Himself, no doubt.”
She fixed on him her eyes dilated with fear, and repeated in a choking whisper: “It is he, himself, Peter! the Antichrist, the Antichrist!”
Book III
THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF THE TSAREVITCH ALEXIS
CHAPTER I
THE DIARY OF FRÄULEIN ARNHEIM, MAID OF HONOUR
May 1, 1714.
A cursed country, a cursed people! Brandy, blood, and dirt! It is difficult to say which is the ruling characteristic. Dirt, perhaps. The Danish King had good reason to say: “The next time ambassadors from Muscovy come to me, I will have pig-sheds erected for them, for any place they occupy, even a short time, is rendered uninhabitable for at least six months by the stench.” A Frenchman describes the Muscovite as a human being according to Plato; a featherless biped possessing all human qualities except cleanliness and common sense.
And these stinking savages, these baptized bears, more pitiable still when changed into apes of Europeans, consider themselves the only human beings, the rest of mankind beasts. Especially for us Germans they feel an inborn and invincible hatred; our touch alone defiles them. Lutherans are little better than Satan himself in their eyes. I would not remain another moment in Russia were it not for my duty of loyalty, and devotion to her Highness, my most gracious mistress and dear friend, the Crown Princess Sophia Charlotte. Whatever may happen, I will not forsake her!
I will write this diary in the languages I usually speak, German and French. But some of the jokes, proverbs, songs, text of ukases and bits of conversation, I will give in Russian and afterwards translate them.
My father, a pure German, belongs to an ancient family of Saxon Knights. My mother was a Pole. With her first husband, a Polish nobleman, she had lived for a long time in Russia, not far from Smolensk, and knew the Russian language well. I was brought up in Torgau, at the court of the Queen of Poland, which was frequented by many Muscovites. I have been familiar with the sound of Russian speech since my childhood. I speak badly; I don’t like the language, but understand it well.
I have decided to keep a diary in order to ease my heart, when it is too heavy: imitating the talker of old, who, not daring to confide his secret to people, whispered it to the marsh-reeds.
I should not like these notes ever to become public, but I rejoice to think that they will one day be read by a man whose opinion I value more than anything else in the world—that of my great teacher, Gottfried Leibnitz.
His letter came just as I was thinking about him. He asks me to find out about the salary which he claims on the strength of his position in the Russian service, as Geheimer Justiz-Rath. I fear he will never see the money. Reading his letter I almost wept for joy and sadness, when I remembered our quiet walks and talks in the galleries of the Salzdallen Castle, along the lime avenues of Herrenhausen, where the gentle breezes among the trees and the murmur of fountains seemed to be ever singing our favourite song from “The Mercure Galant.”
“Chantons, dançons, tout est tranquille
Dans cet agréable séjour.
Ah! le charmant asile!
N’y parlons que de jeux, de plaisirs et d’amours.”
I remembered the teacher’s words which at that time I almost believed: “I am a Slav as you are; we ought to rejoice that we have Slavonic blood in our veins. A great destiny awaits the race. Russia will link Europe to Asia and reconcile the East and the West. This country is like a new stewpot which has not yet absorbed any foreign flavour; a sheet of white paper, whereon you can write anything you like; virgin soil which will be broken up, and ploughed to receive new seed. Russia might in time even lead Europe, since she may avoid those errors which are too deeply rooted in us.” An inspired look lit up his face as he concluded, “I seem called by Providence to be a Russian Solon—the lawgiver of a new world. To gain supremacy over the mind of such a man as the Tsar, and direct it for the good of the people is of more worth than the gaining of a hundred battles.”
Alas! My poor great dreamer! Could you but know and see all I have learnt and seen in Russia!
Even now as I am writing, sad and stark reality reminds me that I am no longer in the delightful refuge at Herrenhausen, that German Versailles, but in the depth of Muscovite Tartary.
Through the window, screams, shouts, and quarrellings reach me from below; the servants of our neighbour, Princess Natalia, are fighting ours; Russians fighting Germans. I see, alas! the union between Asia and Europe, the East and the West, as it really is.
In ran our secretary, pale and trembling, his dress in tatters, his face bleeding. On seeing him the Crown Princess almost swooned. The Tsarevitch was sent for, but he was suffering from his habitual complaint—drunkenness.
May 2.
We occupy the palace of the Crown Prince Alexis, situated on the banks of the Neva, a whitewashed, two-storied house with a red-tiled roof. The accommodation is so limited that nearly the whole of her Highness’s retinue had to be lodged in the neighbouring houses, hired by the Senate for that purpose. One of them had neither doors, windows, stoves, nor furniture of any sort. Her Highness was obliged to finish it at her own expense, and add stables to it.
Yesterday, the proprietor of the house, a certain Gedeónoff, returned; he is in Tsarevna Natalia’s service: he ordered our servants to be turned out, and our things to be thrown into the yard. Then he began to lead her Highness’s horses out of the stables and put in his own instead. The Crown Princess ordered the stables to be taken down so as to remove them to another place. But when the Stallmeister brought the workmen, Gedeónoff sent some of his, who beat ours and chased them away. When the Stallmeister threatened to report this to the Tsar, Gedeónoff answered laughingly: “Report as much as you like; I will forestall you!”
But worst of all is the fact that he assures us, he does everything by order of the Tsarevna. This Tsarevna is an old maid, and the vilest tempered creature in the world. She is very amiable to our face, but when our back is turned, every time her Highness’s name is mentioned she spits, saying: “The German minx! what airs she gives herself! The time will come when she will have to cultivate a little modesty!”
Thus our grooms are obliged to sleep in the open. So limited is the accommodation in the whole town that the men could not be lodged elsewhere, even for a hundred pieces of gold. When this is mentioned to the Tsar, all he replies is, that in a few years time there will be houses enough. But they won’t be needed then, at least not for our people, who, for the most part, will probably have died.
They would not believe in Europe if they knew what poverty is ours. The money for the maintenance of the Crown Princess is paid so irregularly and scantily that it never suffices. At the same time everything is frightfully dear here; we have to pay for things four times as much as in Germany. We are in debt to all our tradesmen; they will soon stop supplying us. To say nothing of servants, we ourselves are sometimes short of candles, firewood, even food. Nothing can be got out of the Tsar, he is always busy. The Tsarevitch is always drunk. “The world is full of misery,” her Highness said to me to-day, “ever since the age of six I have known no happiness, and no doubt Providence has still greater misfortunes in store for me.” With an absent look, as if she already beheld this future, she repeated: “I shall not escape it,” and with such calm resignation that I found no words to comfort her and could only silently kiss her hand.
Suddenly a cannon shot was heard. We were obliged to make haste and get ready for a pleasure party on the Neva, a “Water Assembly.”
It is the custom here, on hearing the gun signal or seeing the flags hung out at different parts of the town, for all barges, yachts, wherries, boyers, to assemble at the fortress. A fine is imposed for non-appearance.
We set out at once in our boyer with ten oarsmen. Together with other boats we kept rowing for a long time up and down the Neva, always following the Admiral, daring neither to lag behind nor overtake, for fear of being fined. Fines are imposed here for everything.
There was music; a band of trumpets and cornets. The bastions of the fortress re-echoed the sounds of the music.
We were sad as the music was, and the cold, pale blue river with its flat banks, the pale blue sky, transparent as ice, the gleam of the golden pinnacle on the Church of St. Peter and Paul, (built of wood, but painted yellow to suggest marble,) the melancholy chiming of the striking clocks, all intensified our dejection, which was of quite a different nature from anything I had hitherto experienced, except in this city.
And yet the view is pleasing enough. Along the low quay, paved with black tarred piles, runs a line of pale pink brick houses of elaborate design, resembling Dutch churches with pointed turrets, garret windows on the high roofs, and spacious latticed vestibules. You might fancy a real town lay behind them. But next behind them stand poor huts roofed with birch-bark and turf, and, further back, a wilderness inhabited by wolves and deer. On the sea front, windmills just as in Holland. Everything is bright, almost dazzling, and, at the same time, pale and cheerless. It seems to be run up, made just for the time being. It is a phantom town, a dream.
The Tsar with all his family were in a special boyer; he stood at the rudder and steered. The Tsaritsa and Princesses wore dimity jackets, red skirts, round oil-skin caps, everything after the Dutch fashion—they looked like real sailors’ wives from Saardam. “I am inuring my family to the water; those who want to live with me must not be afraid of water,” said Peter. He generally takes them with him; especially in cold weather. He locks them in a cabin and steers the whole time against the wind, until he has well rocked them, and “salvo honore,” made them sea sick; then only is he content!
We were afraid lest it might be decided to go to Kronslot. Those who took part in one such excursion last year (they think of it with terror even to this day), were overtaken by a storm, and narrowly escaped drowning; then they went aground fast on a sand bank, and remained there for several hours up to the waist in water. At last they succeeded in reaching an island, a fire was made, and, quite naked (they had been obliged to take their wet clothes off), wrapped themselves in coarse sledge covers obtained from the peasants, and in this way they spent a whole night, warming themselves at the fire, without drink or food—new Robinson Crusoes.
But this time Providence favoured us; the red standard on the Admiral’s boyer was lowered, a sign that the excursion was over.
We returned along the canals, viewing the town. Canals are very numerous here. “God grant me a long life, and Petersburg will become a second Amsterdam!” boasts the Tsar. “Arrange everything as it is done in Holland,” these are common words in the Tsar’s ukases, in reference to the building of the town. The Tsar has a passion for straight lines, everything that is straight and regular seems beautiful to him. If it were possible he would have had the whole town built according to rule and compass. The inhabitants are urged to build in lines, no building either to exceed or fall short of a fixed line, so that the streets and lanes may all be regular and straight. Houses which go beyond the line are ruthlessly pulled down.
The Tsar’s pride is the interminably long, straight Nevsky Prospect, which cuts through the town. The street is still quite waste amid solitary marshes, yet it is already planted with three or four rows of lime-trees, like an avenue. It is kept very clean, being swept every Saturday by captive Swedes.
Many of these geometrical lines of imaginary streets are almost without houses. Waymarks alone stand there; others, already built on, bear traces of the plough and furrows of recent cultivation.
Though the houses are erected of brick, according to Vitruvius’ directions, yet so hurried and precarious has been the work that they threaten to fall. When a carriage passes they tremble. The swampy soil has no resistance. The Tsar’s enemies predict that some time the whole town will be engulphed.
One of our companions, the old Baron Loewenwold, the High Commissioner of Livonia, an amiable and clever man, told us a number of curious incidents about the beginning of the town. In order to raise the first earth rampart of the Peter and Paul fortress, dry earth was needed; none was to be had anywhere near, all being marsh, mud and moss. Then they devised the plan of carrying the soil for the bastions from distant places in old bast sacks and mats, or even simply in the skirts of their tunics. At this Sisyphean labour two-thirds of the poor wretches perished; more especially in consequence of the godless peculation and faithlessness of those in whose keeping they were. For months they never saw any bread, which is often difficult to procure even for money in this forlorn place. They lived on cabbage and turnips, suffered from diarrhoea and scurvy, swelled with hunger, froze in their earthen habitats, which resembled the holes of animals, and died like flies. The erection of the fortress on the Pleasure Island (appropriate name!) cost the lives of hundreds of thousands who were driven here by force like cattle from all parts of Russia. In fact this unnatural city, this pleasant “Paradise,” as the Tsar called it, is built on human bones! They pay no ceremonies here either to the living or the dead. I myself have seen in various parts of the town the body of a workman wrapped in a mat, carried on a pole by men, or, bare as it was, simply laid on a sledge and taken to the cemetery, where it was buried without any rite. Such a number of the poor folk die here daily that there is no time to give them all Christian burial.
One hot summer day, rowing on the Neva, we noticed grey patches on the azure surface; they turned out to be masses of dead midges—which abound in the neighbouring marshes. These came from Lake Ládoga. One of the oarsmen scooped up a hatful of them.
While listening to Loewenwold’s tales about the building of Petersburg I closed my eyes, and before me rose a vision of countless human bodies, very grey and small, like these masses of dead midges floating on the Neva, a mass without beginning or end, of persons whom nobody knows and nobody remembers.
On my return home I sat down to write this diary in my small room, a veritable bird’s cage, in the attic, just below the roof.
It felt close, I opened the window, in rushed the smell of spring, also of tar and pine shavings. On the banks of the Neva two carpenters, a young man and an old one, were repairing a boat. Nothing but the hammering was heard, and the monotonous melancholy song which the younger man was singing over and over again. Here are the few words I was able to catch:
In the town Saint Petersburg
On the river Neva,
On the glorious Basil Isle,
A sailor rigged his ship, O!
Gazing up towards the evening sky, pale green, transparent and cold as ice, I listened to this melancholy song, so like a wail, and myself was moved almost to tears.
May 3.
To-day her Highness went to see the Tsaritsa; she complained about Gedeónoff, and also asked for a more regular payment of the money. I was present at the interview.
The Tsaritsa was amiable as usual.
“Czaarishe Majestät Euch sehr lieb,” she said to the Crown Princess in her broken German, during the conversation.
“Believe me, his Majesty is very fond of you. ‘Truly Catherine,’ said he, ‘your daughter-in-law is exceedingly pleasing both in appearance and temperament.’ ‘Your Majesty,’ said I, ‘you love your daughter more than me.’ ‘No,’ he answered and laughed, ‘not more, but very soon I will love her as much. My son,’ said he, ‘is really not worthy of so good a wife.’”
We concluded from these words that the Tsar was not over fond of his son.
When her Highness almost tearfully interceded for her husband, the Tsaritsa promised to be his advocate, always with the same amiability, assuring her that she loved her as her own child, and had she carried her under her heart, she could not have loved her better.
I don’t like this Russian sentimentality: it is honey on the knife’s point.
Yet it appears that her Highness does not deceive herself; she once said in my presence that the Tsaritsa was worse than the rest: “pire que tout le reste.”
To-day, coming home from the interview, she remarked, “she will never forgive me if I bear a son.”
One day when our conversation had turned on the Tsaritsa, an old peasant woman whispered into my ear, “She has no business to reign; she was neither born to it, nor is she a Russian. And we know how she was taken prisoner, brought into the camp with only a chemise on, and given into custody. The man on duty, our officer, gave her a coat. The Lord alone knows of what rank she is; they say she used to wash shirts in Finland.”
I could not help remembering this to-day when her Highness, in greeting the Tsaritsa, was going to stoop and kiss her dress, according to court etiquette. It is true the Tsaritsa did not allow it to come to that, but herself embraced and kissed her. Yet, what an irony of fate, that a Princess of Wolfenbüttel, heiress of the great Guelphs, who contested the German Imperial Crown in days when the houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg had never yet been heard of, should kiss the dress of this woman who once was a laundress!
May 4.
After warm sunny days it has suddenly turned wintry again, with cold wind, wet, snow and rain. Ice from the Ládoga is floating down the Neva. We are told, however, that snow falls here even as late as June.
Our palace has been so neglected that even its roof has proved unsound; to-night, during a severe rainfall, water came through the ceiling in her Highness’s bedchamber; a good thing it did not come on the bed; but there was a pool on the floor.
The ceiling is decorated with a painted allegory; a burning altar entwined with roses; on both sides Cupids bearing two coats of arms; the Russian Eagle and the Brunswick Steed. Between them, two clasped hands and the inscription, “Non unquam junxit nobiliora fides.” “Never did fidelity join two nobler beings.” The damp has formed a black spot just over the altar, and cold dirty water kept dripping from Hymen’s flame.
I remembered the wedding speech made by the archeologist Eckhardt, in which he tried to prove that both bride and bridegroom descended from the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus. A fine country, where rain falls on the nuptial couch of the descendant of the Porphyrogene!
May 5.
At last the Crown Prince has appeared. He lives in the other half of the house, quite separate from us, and often weeks pass by without our ever seeing him. The pair have had a ‘scene.’ I heard it all from the adjacent room where her Highness had expressly wished me to remain.
To all her prayers and complaints in regard to the Gedeónoff affair and the keeping back of money, he answered, shrugging his shoulders,
“Mich nichts angehn. Bekümmere mich nicht an Sie. This matter is no business of mine. I do not trouble myself about your money affairs.”
Then he burst out reproaching her for complaining to his father about him.
“Are you not ashamed of yourself?” sobbed her Highness. “Spare at least your own honour! In Germany you would not find a cobbler or tailor, who would allow himself thus to treat his wife.”
“You are no longer in Germany but in Russia.”
“I am only too well aware of this. Yet if only everything were carried out that was promised.”
“Who promised?”
“Did not you with the Tsar sign the marriage contract?”
“Halten Maul! Ich habe sie nichts versprochen. Hold your tongue! I promised you nothing. You very well know that you were forced upon me!”
He jumped up; the chair he had sat on fell to the ground.
I almost rushed to her rescue, I was afraid he would strike her. I hated him to such an extent at that moment, that I believe I could have killed him.
“Das danke ihnen der Henker! May the headsman reward you for this!” exclaimed the Crown Princess, beside herself with anger and sorrow.
Swearing at her in an odious manner, he left the room, slamming the door.
It seems all that is wild and base in this country is incarnate in this man. Only one thing I find hard to decide. Which is he, a fool or a scoundrel?
Poor Charlotte! Her Highness, who daily shows me greater friendship, quite beyond my deserts, has herself desired that I should so call her. Poor Charlotte, when I came to her, she threw herself into my arms, and remained silent for a long while, trembling all over. At last she said sobbing:
“If only I were not with child and could, without hindrance return to Germany, I would gladly agree to live there on dry bread and water. I am well nigh losing my reason. I pray God to give me strength, so that I may not be tempted to do something desperate!”
And after awhile she gently added, weeping in her wonted submissiveness, which frightens me more than all her despair:—
“I am the unhappy victim of my family. They have profited nothing from my sacrifice, while I myself am slowly dying of grief.”
We were both crying when they came to tell us it was time to go to the masquerade. Suppressing our tears we began to dress. Such is the custom here: willy nilly, be merry thou must.
The masquerade took place in the open air in the Troitsky Square, near the “hôtellerie.” The square is very low, marshy, and covered with mud, which never dries; part of it had been covered with beams, and wooden planks on the top of these. On the platform thus formed the masqueraders crowded. Happily the weather had again suddenly changed; it was a calm, warm evening. But towards night a thick mist, white as milk, rose from the river and enveloped the square. Many, and especially those ladies who had on extremely thin costumes, were catching cold from the damp, and began to sneeze and cough. Instead of medicine they were given brandy; grenadiers as usual carried it round in buckets. In the white shroud of mist, illumined by the greenish light of the slowly fading twilight—later on in July twilight lasts the whole night through—all these masqueraders, harlequins, pagliazzi, shepherdesses, nymphs, Chinese, Arabs, bears, cranes, and dragons, seemed grotesque and terrible phantoms.
Here also, close to the platform on which we were dancing, black posts with iron points were visible, and on them remained the almost putrefied heads of decapitated criminals. The stench from these heads mingled with the resinous perfume of young pine shoots and birch buds, which now fills the city. And again it seemed, as it always does in this place, all was but a mirage!
May 6.
An unexpected reconciliation! When I approached the half open door, leading to her Highness’s apartment, I saw by chance, in the mirror that she was sitting in an arm-chair, while the Crown Prince, stooping over her and holding her head with both his hands, was kissing her upon the brow with deferential tenderness. I was going to retire, but she too caught sight of me in the mirror and signed to me with her hand. I understood that she wished me to stay, as I did last time, in the next room. The poor girl probably wanted to parade her happiness.
“‘Der Mensch, der sagen, ich sie nicht lieb habe, lügt wie Teufel!’, He who says, I don’t love you lies like the devil!” said the Tsarevitch; I divined that they were talking of one of those slanders about her Highness, which circulate here so freely, (she is even accused of unfaithfulness to her husband). “I believe in you, I know you are good; and those who speak evil about you are not worth your little finger.”
He enquired after her affairs, her troubles, her health, her condition, with such sympathy, and his words and features were so full of intelligence and kindness that he seemed to me quite another being. I could scarcely believe my eyes and ears, remembering what had passed in the same room only yesterday.
When he left and we were alone, Charlotte said to me:
“What a strange man he is, not in the least what he seems. Nobody knows him. How he loves me! Ah, my dear Juliana, give me love, and all will be well, I can endure everything! And when a child will be born unto me, I pray God it may be a son, I shall be quite happy!”
I did not answer; I had not the courage to undeceive her; she was already so happy, but for how long? poor, poor woman!
Perhaps I am unfair to the Tsarevitch? May be, he is really different from what he seems.
He is the most reserved of men. When he is not drunk, he sits buried among his old books: he is supposed to be studying Universal History, and Theology, not only Russian, but also the Catholic and Protestant; he is said to have read through the German Bible eight times: or else he holds converse with monks, pilgrims, friars, and people of the lowest class.
One of his servants, a certain Fédor Yevarlakóff, an intelligent young fellow, a great lover of literature—he borrows from me various books, even Latin ones—told me one day something concerning the Crown Prince, which I at once set down in my note book, a gift from dear Leibnitz, which I always carry with me.
“The Tsarevitch is warmly attached to the priests and the priests to him. He reveres them like God, and they call him a saint; they always beatify him to the people.”
I remember Leibnitz telling me, that on being introduced to him in the summer of 1711, at the ducal castle of Wolfenbüttel, he had a long conversation with the Tsarevitch on his favourite subject: the union of the East with the West, China and Russia with Europe, and that later on he had sent him, through his tutor Baron Huissen, an abstract of the letters about Chinese affairs, Leibnitz asserted that, contrary to all rumours spread about the Tsarevitch, he is very clever, only his intelligence is of a different kind to his father’s. “He probably takes after his grandfather,” remarked Leibnitz.
Her Highness had shown me a copy of the letter received by the Duke Ludwig Rudolf of Wolfenbüttel, her father, from the Berlin Royal Academy of Science. This letter mentions the possibility of spreading real Christian enlightenment throughout Russia in the near future, thanks to the special and marked inclination of the Crown Prince to all science and books.
I have also seen the report of meetings held by the same Academy, in 1711, when one of its members, the Co-Rector Frish, had declared: “The Tsar’s heir loves the sciences even more than the Tsar himself, and in his time he will patronise them no less.”
It seems strange! But I was looking at them both to-day in the mirror, as it were the mysterious mirror of fate, I seemed to distinguish in both faces, so unlike in appearance, one common trait—the shadow of some impending grief, as if they were victims, and great suffering were in store for them both. Or was this only fancy roused by that dark mirror?
May 8.
To-day we were present at the launching of a large seventy-gun man-of-war. The Tsar, dressed as a common shipwright, in a red knitted jerkin daubed with tar, axe in hand, was clambering about the hull props, seeing that all was in order, and paying no heed to danger:—only lately two men were killed at a launching. I remembered the Tsar’s words: “I toil like Noah at the Ark of Russia!” Taking his hat off before the chief Admiral, like a subordinate to his chief, he asked whether it was time to begin, and having received the order, he was the first to strike with his axe. A hundred more axes began to cut the props, at the same time the beams were drawn back which had supported the vessel on both sides in the stays. She glided along the greased cradle foot, first slowly, then like a dart, smashing the cradle foot into shivers, and floated out on the water, rolling and cutting the waves for the first time to the sound of music, cannon salutes, and shouting of the people.
A small boat took us to the new vessel. The Tsar was on board already; he had changed into the uniform of a naval officer, and decorated with a star and the pale blue ribbon of St. Andrew, he received the guests. All standing on the deck, “the newly born” ship was baptized with a first cup of wine. The Tsar made a speech. Here are some stray words I have remembered:—
“Our people resemble children, who never will learn their A B C unless they are made to; they grumble at the time, but once having mastered it, they are grateful. The occurrences of to-day prove this. Has not everything been done under compulsion? And yet words of gratitude are already heard for those undertakings which have borne fruit. If you disdain the bitter, neither shall you enjoy the sweet!”
Standing behind me, I overheard one of the fools, an old boyar, who was probably drunk, whisper to his neighbour, “We would rather not have your blessings when they have to be purchased by so many aches and pains.”
“We have,” continued the Tsar, “the precedents of the civilised nations in Europe, who also began in a small way. It is time for us also to make a start, first in little things, and later will come men who will not recoil before the greater tasks. I know I shall neither do it, nor see it done, for the number of our days is but short, yet will I make a beginning, then those who come after me will find it easier. As for us, we must content ourselves with the glory of having begun!”
I admired the Tsar, he looked so noble. We went down into the cabins, the ladies sat part from the men in an adjacent saloon, where, during the banquet, no man except the Tsar was allowed to enter. There was a small round window, hung with red damask, in the partition between the two saloons. I sat next to it; raising the curtain a little I could see and partly hear what went on in the men’s apartment. Some of the things I have put down in my note book.
Long narrow tables, arranged in the shape of a horse shoe, were laden with cold dishes; pickles and fumados, anything that would create intense thirst. The food is coarse, the wines are good. For the furnishing of these banquets the Tsar allows the Admiralty from his private purse one thousand roubles, a vast sum for this country. The guests sat down anyhow, without any distinction of rank, common seamen next to the highest dignitaries. At one of the tables presided the Kniaz-Pope, the mock Prince-pope, surrounded by his cardinals. He solemnly pronounced “Grace and peace be unto you, noble assembly! In the name of Bacchus, and Ivaska Khmelnitsky, and the Spirit of wine. The drunkenness of Bacchus be with you!”
“Amen,” responded the Tsar, who fills the position of Archdeacon to the Pope.
All guests approached in their turn his Holiness, bowed low before him, kissed his hand, and accepting a ladle of pepper-brandy drank it; this is pure spirit of wine—spiritus vini—poured over red Indian pepper. I should have thought that the mere threat of this brandy would be sufficient to extract confessions from the most hardened malefactor,—here they compel even ladies to drink it.
The health of all the members of the royal household was proposed; only the Tsarevitch and his wife were omitted, although they were present. Every toast was accompanied by the firing of cannon, and the shock of the firing was so great that the glass in one of the windows cracked.
The guests grew speedily intoxicated, especially as brandy was being secretly added to the wine. The air became close in the low cabins, crowded with people. The guests threw off their waistcoats, and pulled off one another’s wigs. Some huddled together and kissed one another, others quarrelled, especially the ministers and senators, who accused one another of bribe-taking, cheating and swindling.
“Your mistress costs you twice your salary!” screamed one.
“Have you forgotten the pickled cibarins?” retorted the other.
Cibarins were pieces of gold, which a cunning petitioner had offered in a small barrel under the guise of mushrooms.
“And how much hemp supplied to the Admiralty did you take off at a gulp, eh?”
“Ah, friends, what is the use of blaming one another? everybody longs for what is good; whether honourable or swindlers, all men are sinners.”
“Bribes are mere accidents!”
“To accept nothing from the petitioners is against nature.”
“Yet by law——”
“What is law but a carriage pole? you can swing it whichever way you like——”
The Tsar listened attentively. It is his custom, when all are drunk, to double the guards and let no one pass out of the door. At the same time, the Tsar, who is never drunk, much as he may take, tries purposely to provoke quarrels among them. He then learns what he could never have known otherwise. There is a proverb to this effect—“When rogues fall out honest men come by their own.” The banquet develops into a public inquiry into character.
The Most Serene Prince Ménshikoff quarrelled with the Vice-Chancellor Shafiroff; the Prince had called the latter a Jew.
“I am a Jew, but you are a pieman,” retorted Shafiroff, “Your father had not even a spoon to eat his soup with. You have been dragged up, ‘taken from the mire you have been made a sire’”—
“You dirty Jew, I’ll crack you on my nail like a flea, and nothing but a little moisture will remain.”
They went on railing at one another for a long time. Russians are as a rule very versatile in ribaldry; I think it is impossible to hear more obscene language anywhere else; the air is full of it. In one of the vilest expressions used by young and old, the term mother is coupled with the most obscene of terms: it is known as the ‘mother-word.’
Having exhausted their resources of abuse, the dignitaries began to spit into one another’s faces, while the guests stood round looking on and laughing. Here such scuffles are quite common, and involve no further consequences.
Prince James Dolgorúki had a tussle with the Prince Caesar Romodanovsky. These two venerable old men, both white with age, abused one another in most insulting terms, then tore one another’s hair, and began strangling and beating one another with their fists. When some of the onlookers tried to separate them, they drew out their swords.
“Ei! dat ist nitt permittet,” exclaimed the Tsar in Dutch, coming up and standing between them.
The Archdeacon Peter Mihailoff is commanded by the Pope “to pacify the guests by word and act during the uproar.”
“I want satisfaction!” moaned Prince James, “I have been sorely affronted.” “Comrade,” remonstrated the Tsar, “Where can you seek judgment against Caesar but from God? I myself am but a subject, and belong to his Majesty’s service. What is the affront after all? None of the assembly has remained untouched by Bacchus. Sauffen-rauffen, we drink, fight, sleep, and make friends.”
For punishment each of them was made to drink another bumper of pepper-brandy. Soon they both were rolling under the table.
Buffoons were shouting, grinning, spitting, not only at one another but also at decent people. A special chorus, called the Spring chorus, imitated the singing of all birds from the nightingale to the warbler, in such piercing, shrill notes that the walls resounded with a deafening noise. A wild dance-song was heard; its words almost meaningless recalled the screams of a witches’ sabbath—
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 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 flag without 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-Pope was 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 that the 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 from it 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 be only 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; and the 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 swallow under 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 certainly know 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 his simplesse, 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; in Russia, 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 dewdrop on 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 translating Le 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 even blood, 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 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 handkerchief stolen 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.
She answers:
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 at night 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’s Metamorphoses, 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 Apraksin conceived 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 everything is 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,’ and then 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 know which 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 myself while 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 The Chronicles 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 having drooped 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.
The walls inside the houses are bare and show the beams; there is a scent of resin, with amber drops trickling like tears everywhere. Holy lamps are glimmering before the images. All is bright, fresh, clean, and innocently young.
The Tsarevitch is fond of this spot. He says he would like to live here always, and demands nothing better than to be left alone.
He reads, writes in the library, prays in the chapel, works in the garden and the orchard, fishes and roams about the forest. At this moment I see him from the window of my room. He has just been digging in the beds, planting bulbs of tulips from Haarlem; now he stands resting on the spade, as still, as if he were trying to catch some sound. Infinite stillness reigns around. Only the axe of a woodcutter is heard somewhere far, far away in the wood, and the call of the cuckoo. His face is calm and joyous. His lips are moving; he is probably humming one of his favourite prayers or hymns, the akathist of his saint, Alexis the Man of God, or the Psalm:
“I will sing unto the Lord all the days of my life. I will sing unto my God while I have my being.”
May 16.
Nowhere have I seen such evening glows as here. To-day the sunset was particularly strange; the whole of the sky bathed in blood, red clouds were scattered like rags of bloodstained garments; it seemed as though a murder or some sacrifice had been performed in the skies, and that blood was running down from heaven upon the earth. Amid the jet-black pointed needles of the firwood the patches of red clay showed like blood stains.
As I stood looking in amazement I heard a voice from somewhere above me, coming as it were from this terrible sky:
“Fräulein Juliana!”
It was the Tsarevitch who called me, standing on the dove house, in his hand a long pole, such as are used here to scare away doves. He is a great lover of doves.
I went up the shaky ladder and on reaching the platform the white doves started, like snow flakes to which the evening glow had given a roseate hue, surrounding us with the wind and rustle of their wings.
We sat down on the bench, and, little by little, drifted again, as we had repeatedly done of late, into a religious discussion.
“Your Martin Luther has allowed himself to be guided by the Spirit of the world and by his own personal predilections, not by the steadfastness of his soul. And you, poor things, have allowed yourselves to be caught by the allurement of an easy life.
“You have believed the words of your seducer and you left the narrow difficult path ordained by Christ Himself. Martin has shown himself to be an universal fool; the great poison of the serpent of hell is hid in his teaching.”
I have got used to Russian pleasantries and no longer take any notice of them; reasonable proofs avail as much in arguing with such people, as a rapier against a club. But this time I was roused, for some reason or other, and I spoke out all that for a long time I had stored up within my heart.
I began by showing that the Russians, while considering themselves superior to all Christian people, lived in reality worse than heathens; they confess the law of love, and yet practise such cruelties as are met with nowhere else in the world; they fast, and during the fast they drink like beasts; they go to church and use the most shocking expressions there; they are so ignorant that in Germany young children know more about religion than adults and priests in Russia. Hardly one out of a dozen could say the Lord’s Prayer. A pious old woman answered my question, who is the third person in the Trinity? by asserting he was St. Nicholas the wonderworker. And really this Nicholas is a true Russian God, and one might easily believe that they had none other God but he. Not in vain did the Swedish theologian Botivid in 1620, discuss the question in a thesis at the Upsala Academy, “Are the Muscovites Christians?” I know not how much more I would have said had not the Tsarevitch stopped me; he had the whole time listened with perfect calmness, it was this calm that exasperated me.
“I have meant for a long time, to ask you, Fräulein: Do you believe in the Divinity of Christ?”
“What do you mean? Does not your Highness know that all we Lutherans——”
“I do not speak generally now, I am asking you in particular. I had once a talk with your teacher Leibnitz: he shifted and shuffled, avoiding a direct answer, but, nevertheless, I at once saw that he did not truly believe in Christ. And now what about you?”
He steadily looked at me. I cast down my eyes, and for some inexplicable reason suddenly remembered all my doubts, my debates with Leibnitz, the unsolvable contradictions of metaphysics and theology.
“I think,” said I, trying also to shuffle, “that Christ was the best and wisest of the sons of men.”
“And not God’s son?”
“We are all sons of God.”
“And is He like unto the rest?”
Unwilling to lie I remained silent.
“Well, that is the point,” he said, with such an expression on his face as I had never seen before. “Your people are wise, learned, strong, honourable, famous. You have everything; but you don’t possess Christ, and you don’t need Him, you save yourselves. We, on the other hand, are stupid, poor, naked, drunk, repugnant, we are worse than barbarians, worse than beasts, and are ever on the brink of falling. But we have the Christ, our Lord with us, and with us He will remain from eternity to eternity. It is by Him, our Light, that we are saved.”
He spoke about Christ as I had noticed the common people, the moujiks, speak here, as if He were their own, one of their family, a moujik just like themselves. I know not whether this is a sign of the highest pride and blasphemous, or, one of the greatest humility and sanctity.
We both remained silent. The doves were returning to their house, and settling down thickly between us, their white fluttering wings as it were uniting us.
Her Highness sent for me. When I had come down, I turned round to have a last look at the Tsarevitch; he was feeding the doves. They had surrounded him, perched on his hands, shoulders, head. He stood there high above the black charred wood in the red bloodstained sky, covered with them, as if wrapt in white wings.
October 31, 1715.
Now that all is over I will end this diary also.
We had returned to Petersburg from Roshdestveno towards the end of May. About the middle of August—ten weeks before the time of her Highness’s delivery, she fell on the stairs and hurt her left side. They say she made a false step, because the heel of her slipper was broken, but in reality she fainted. She had seen below in the courtyard the Tsarevitch drunk, embracing and kissing his mistress, the serf-girl Afrossinia.
He had been living with her for a long time; he does it almost publicly; on his return from Karlsbad he took her into the quarter of the house which he inhabits. I did not mention this in my diary, afraid lest her Highness should read it.
Did she know? Even if she did, she tried not to know, she did not believe it till she saw it. A serf-girl is the rival of the Duchess of Wolfenbüttel—the Emperor’s sister-in-law. “Things which never happen, happen in Russia,” said a Russian to me. The father with a laundress, the son with a serf-girl!
Some say she is a Finnish woman, taken prisoner by soldiers in the same way as the Tsaritsa; others say she is a serf belonging to the tutor of the Tsarevitch—Nikiphor Viasemski; the latter statement seems more probable. She is handsome enough, yet her low origin is at once obvious. She is tall, fair-skinned, and has auburn hair, her nose is slightly turned up; her eyes are large, clear, slanting and almond shape like a Kalmuck’s, with the untamed gaze of a wild goat. She seems, on the whole, to have something goat-like about her, like the female satyr in Rubens’ picture of the Bacchanalia. It is one of those faces which revolt us women, and almost invariably please men. The Tsarevitch is supposed to be madly in love with her. It is said that when they first met she was innocent, shy, tameless, and for a long time resisted him. He did not please her at all. Neither promises nor threats would help. But once, after a drinking bout, he met her in one of those fits of madness which he, like his father, is subject to. He beat her unmercifully and nearly killed her; then threatening to stab, at last seduced her. Russian manners!
And this is the same being who looked so like a saint when in the woods of Roshdestveno, sang the akathist to Alexis the Man of God, and, surrounded by doves, spoke about the Lord Christ! For the rest, it is a special Russian gift to unite such extremes—a gift which, thank the Lord! has as yet not been revealed to us foolish foreigners.
The Tsarevitch himself once told me: “We Russians can never keep the middle path, but are always roving either on the heights or in the abysses.”
After the fall her Highness felt a pain in her left side. “I feel as if pins were pricking my body all over,” she used to say, yet, on the whole, she was calm, as if she had finally made up her mind, and knew that nothing would alter her decision. She never talked to me about the Tsarevitch again, neither did she complain of her lot. Only once she said: “I know I am irrevocably doomed. I hope my sufferings will soon end; I long for nothing in the world so eagerly as for death. Death is my sole salvation.”
On October 12th she was safely delivered of a boy, the future heir to the throne, Peter Alexeyevitch. The first days after her confinement she felt well, yet when people congratulated her, and wished her good health, she would grow angry and ask everyone to pray God to send her death. “I want to die, and die I will,” she said, with that awful, calm determination which never left her again. She obeyed neither doctors nor midwife; she seemed purposely to do everything which was forbidden her. On the fourth day she sat in an arm-chair, ordered herself to be carried into another room, and gave the child the breast herself. That same night she felt worse: fever set in, sickness, convulsions and such pains, that she cried out more than at the time of her delivery.
When the Tsar, who himself was ill at that time, knew about it, he sent Prince Ménshikoff and four court physicians, Areskin, Polikolo, and the two Blumentrosts, to hold a consultation. They found her dying, in mortis limine.
When they tried to persuade her to take medicine she tossed the glass to the ground, saying: “Don’t torment me, let me go peacefully, I don’t want to live.”
The day before her death she summoned Baron Loewenwold and communicated to him her last will: none of her people were to speak ill of the Tsarevitch, either here or in Germany; she was dying young, earlier than she expected, yet she was content with her lot and blamed none.
Then she took leave of us all. She gave me her blessing like a mother.
The Tsarevitch did not leave her. His face was terrible to look at. He fainted three times. She did not talk to him; it almost seemed that she did not recognise him. Only just before all was over, when he pressed her hand to his lips, she looked at him with a long look, and said something in a low voice. All I could hear was:—
“Soon, soon we shall see each other again!”
She died as if she had fallen asleep. The dead face expressed more happiness than it had ever shown in her lifetime.
By the Tsar’s order a post mortem examination was made, he himself being present.
The funeral was fixed for October 27th. There was a long discussion whether the rank of a Crown Princess demanded cannon to be fired at her funeral; if so, how many guns to the salute. All the foreign ambassadors were questioned on the subject. The Tsar troubled himself more about this cannonade than he had ever troubled himself about the lot of her Highness when alive. It was decided not to fire.
The coffin was borne along a narrow bridge constructed on purpose, from the house to the Neva. The Tsar and Tsarevitch walked behind the coffin. The Tsaritsa was not present—she hourly expected her delivery. A mourning frigate stood waiting on the Neva; it was draped with black, and black standards were hoisted on it. Slowly to the sounds of funeral music, the ship bore us towards the Peter and Paul Cathedral, not yet completed, where the grave of the Crown Princess had to remain under the open sky until the closing of the vaulted roof. The sky wept over her when alive; it will rain on her when dead.
The evening was dull and calm, the sky seemed like the vault of a grave; the Neva, a dark gloomy mirror. The town, wrapped in mist appeared like a phantom or nightmare. All I had experienced, seen, and heard in this dreadful city, now, more than ever, seemed to me as a dream.
From the cathedral we returned at night to the house of the Tsarevitch, for a commemoration banquet. Here the Tsar handed a letter to his son; I learnt later that he threatened to disinherit and curse him unless he reformed.
The next day the Tsaritsa was delivered of a son.
The fate of Russia wavers between those two children, the son and the grandson of the Tsar.
November 1.
I went in to the Tsarevitch last evening to talk over my departure for Germany. He sat near the lighted stove and was thrusting in burning papers, letters and manuscripts. He is probably afraid of some search.
He was holding in his hand and was just about to throw into the fire a small booklet in a well worn leather binding, when—I am even now amazed at my presumption—I inquired what it was. He handed it to me. I looked inside. It was his diary and notes. The ruling passion of women in general, and of myself in particular, is curiosity. It made me be guilty of a still greater presumption, I asked if I might borrow it to read.
He thought for a minute, then looking at me, and with his sweet child-like smile of which I am so fond:
“Quid pro quo—I read your diary, you can read mine.”
He made me promise that I would never talk to anybody about these notes and would return them to be burnt on the morrow. I have sat up the whole night with them; the booklet itself is really an old Russian calendar, a church calendar printed at Kiev. It had been given to the Tsarevitch by the late Metropolitan of Rostov, Demetrius, who is counted a saint by the people. The Tsarevitch had put down his thoughts and the events of his life partly on the margin and the blank spaces on the pages, partly on separate leaflets either simply inserted or pasted in.
I decided to make a copy of the diary.
I will not break my word, during my lifetime and his. Nobody shall know about his notes. But they must not be irrevocably lost.
God Himself will judge between father and son. But men have slandered the Tsarevitch. Let this diary, should it ever reach posterity, accuse or justify him, in any case reveal the truth.
CHAPTER II
THE DIARY OF TSAREVITCH ALEXIS
Crown with Thy loving kindness, O Lord, this year which now begins!
When on commissariat duties in Pomerania by order of the author of my being,[2] I heard that at Moscow, in the church of the Assumption, Stephen, the Metropolitan of Riazan, denounced the decree relating to delators—informers in civil and church matters—and other laws contrary to the Church, crying unto the people:—
“Be not amazed that rebellious Russia is agitated with bloody storms. How great is the gulf between the laws of man and the laws of God!”
The Senators came to the Metropolitan and accused him of spreading revolt among the people and of touching upon the Tsar’s honour. The whole incident was reported to the Tsar.
I told the Metropolitan to reconcile himself with my father as best he could. What advantage was there in their being at variance with one another? I was anxious to see a reconciliation, for if Stephen was deposed from his see, it would be difficult to find any one worthy to replace him.
Previous to this exhortation he used to write to me and I to him; not often, however, only on important affairs. But since then I have stopped the correspondence, and broken off all intercourse with him, as my father’s anger was kindled against him, and it became therefore dangerous for me to write any longer. It is rumoured he will be deposed from his see.
The Metropolitan concluded the above-mentioned sermon by praying to Saint Alexis, the Man of God, with special reference to myself, a sinner:—
“O Saint of God! remember thy namesake, the chosen keeper of God’s laws, thy most faithful follower, Tsarevitch Alexis Petrovitch! Thou didst abandon thy house; he too wanders among strangers. Thou wert bereft of slaves, subjects, friends and relatives; so it is with him. Thou art a man of God; he, too, is a true servant of Christ. We beseech thee, O Saint of God! deign to protect thy namesake, our only hope, shelter him under the cover of thy wing, like a dearly beloved fledgeling, and keep him, who is the very apple of our eyes, safe from all evil.”
During my stay in foreign parts, where by the will of the author of my being I had to apply myself to the study of navigation, fortification, geometry, and other arts, I greatly feared to die without confession and the last rites of the church. So I have written to my chaplain, Father James, on the subject as follows:—
“We have no priest with us, nor is there any possibility of our procuring one. I entreat your holiness to find me a priest in Moscow and send him here secretly. Make him discard all priestly insignia: shave his beard and let hair grow over his tonsure, or else shave his hair too, and wear a wig and foreign dress. Let him come under the guise of an orderly of mine. Please father do it! Have mercy upon my soul, and let me not die without the consolation of the church. This is all I want him for in case of death, and should I live, he would be my confessor. It would be well if he were a young man, unmarried and unattached. Let his departure from Moscow be kept so secret that even his friends shall not know whither he has gone. As to the shaving of the beard, let him have no misgivings on the point; necessity alters even such laws; it is better to transgress in minor things than to let a soul perish without absolution. See to this without delay, and should you refrain from doing as I ask you, God may have to call you to account for my soul.”
On my return to Petersburg from abroad, the author of my days welcomed me graciously and inquired whether I still remembered what I had learnt? To which I replied “Yes,” as if I really did; he then ordered me to bring him my drawings. But I, fearing I could not please him, if asked to draw in his presence, decided on injuring my right hand and thus disable it for use. Loading a pistol, I took it in my left hand and fired across my right palm; though the bullet did not touch my hand, yet the powder badly scorched it. The bullet embedded itself in the wall of my closet where it has remained visible even unto this day. The author of my being, noticing my burnt hand, asked how it happened. I gave a false reason.
Chapter 7, Art. 63 of the military regulations: “Whoever makes himself ill or breaks his limbs and thus unfits himself for service is liable to have his nostrils torn, and be condemned to forced labour.”
From the laws of Tsar Alexis Michailovitch, Chapter 22, Art. 6: “And in the case of a son petitioning against his father, no judgment shall be given; but he, having been flogged for such petition, shall be delivered up to the father.”
This is unjust, for though children are dependent upon their parents’ will, yet they must not be treated like dumb animals. The natural law is not fulfilled by the procreation of children alone; humaneness forms also part of a father’s duty.
I hear that the author of my days hates houses being built in Moscow, for it is his will to live in Petersburg.
It lies not with one man alone to change national customs. The country which changes its customs cannot endure. The Russian people have forgotten the water in their own cisterns, and have begun to slake their thirst with the turbid waters of strangers.
Job, the Archimandrite of Novgorod, told me: “Evil awaits thee in Petersburg, yet I feel God will deliver thee. Thou wilt see what will happen.”
God has so willed it with us sinners that foreigners do with us just as it pleases them. We all suffer from a mania. This fatal illness is a mad passion for foreign things and people, which has infected our whole nation. Truly says the prophet Baruch: “Let a stranger come near thee and he will destroy thee.” The Germans boast and have a saying, ‘he who wants to eat bread without work, let him go to Russia.’ They call us barbarians and choose to reckon us among the beasts instead of men. They try to make us out before other nations as worse than dead dogs. It would be as well to stop some of these foreign antics; they don’t come natural to us and we only make a muddle in meddling with them. The foreign way becomes with us the fool’s way. We degrade ourselves, our language, our nation; and we expose ourselves to the ridicule of every one.
The intrusion of foreign languages has spoilt the purity of the Slavonic tongue. I know not what need we have to use foreign words. It must be only to make a boast of, there is little honour in doing it. Sometimes they speak in a way that neither they themselves nor others can understand.
Sit not down under a stranger’s hedgerow. Rather among nettles if they are thine own. A stranger’s wit forsakes thee at the threshold. Keep thine own counsel; thine own counsellors. Pleasant is the sound of the tambours beyond the hill; but when brought hither they are but baskets of bast.
Foreigners are far beyond us, I grant you, in knowledge; yet in natural quickness of wit our people are, thank God, not worse equipped than they, and they do wrong in railing at us. I am persuaded that God created us Russians not inferior to other human beings.
I doubt whether it be really true that man’s welfare standeth on knowledge or the sciences alone. For folk used to learn much less in the old days, and were happier than we to-day with our much learning. It is possible with much culture to be a rascal. Learning in a depraved heart is a powerful weapon for evil.
We Russians can do without bread. We devour each other, and are satisfied.
The boyars are great withered trees; their massive trunks hide the people from the Tsar. My father is exceedingly intelligent; yet Ménshikoff is always hoodwinking him.
All administrators, whether young or old, are greedy of gain. The ancient laws have fallen into desuetude: the new ones also count for nothing. What a number are decreed! and to what purpose? Nothing is really changed. I don’t see that much good will come of these reforms in the future.
A sovereign’s duties:
Not to trust in one’s brilliancy of mind, but to be zealous to protect the people, the land and the villages, and to love, be zealous for, interested in the lesser brethren of Christ and to know their needs. Severe shall be His judgment upon the great and mighty ones! The little shall be forgiven, but torment awaits the mighty ill-doers. This I should do well to remember, should God grant me to become Tsar.
On St. Eustace the martyr’s day we held high fête and got grievously drunk. Our faces were well pummelled; Jibanda had a blow in the eye, the Lasher lost a tooth. I don’t remember anything, and I hardly know how I got away. I was exceedingly filled with the gifts of Bacchus.
In Roshdestveno I remained at home alone. The days flowed by like water; nothing save utter stillness.
Time passes and brings us nearer death; the end of our days approaches; I recognise the frailty of my life.
I await death, but without fear or desire.
A little drunk.
My wife is pregnant.
Eros, Eros, heathen god! Passions have harassed me from my youth up. I accuse others of godlessness, and am myself the most godless of all. Afrossinia! I know my iniquity and have not redeemed myself from shame. Thy hand weighs heavily upon me, O Lord! When shall I come and appear before God? my tears have been my meat, day and night; and my soul fainteth for the courts of the Lord.
I am amazed at my father. Why does he love Theodosius? Is it because the latter introduces Lutheran customs among the people and authorises everything? He really is an atheist, and a deep enemy of the cross of the Lord.
I have seldom seen so subtle a rogue. He is very adroit, he will never do wrong openly. We must be on our guard with him and be careful and stealthy in thwarting him, since we are obliged to live under his orders.
The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, O Lord. I am sore afraid and troubled lest Christianity perish entirely in Russia.
Theodosius, the heresiarch, and his crew have openly begun to wage war against the Church; they abolish fasts, they treat confession and self-immolation as nonsense; they ridicule celibacy, self-imposed poverty, and change other strait and narrow ways of the Christian life into the smooth broad ways which lead to eternal damnation. They fearlessly teach a debauched self-indulgent life; they recognise no sin, everything is holy, and by their teaching they have brought the children of the world into such fearless voluptuousness, that many take up the mere Epicurean attitude: “Eat, drink, and be merry. There is no account to render after death.”
They call the holy icons idols, the church singing bulls’ roaring. They destroy chapels, and where the walls have remained, they allow tobacco and barbers’ shops to be opened. They take miracle-working icons away on stinking dung carts under dirty mats, thus insolently defiling them before the people. In this way they attack the Orthodox faith, under the pretext that it is not Christianity, but only useless and harmful superstitions which they are trying to uproot. What a number of clergy have been destroyed, unfrocked and tortured under this pretext! If you ask for a reason, the only answer you get is: they were superstitious, bigots, sanctimonious humbugs! He who keeps fast is a bigot; he who prays, sanctimonious; he who adores the icons, invariably (they say) a hypocrite.
All this is done with such cunning, and the intention both to exterminate the Orthodox clergy in Russia, and to introduce their newly invented Lutheran and Calvinistic, priestless sects.
He is truly mad who does not detect in them the atheistic spirit.
The church bells have been altered, they no longer chime, but tinkle as if sounding an alarm. And everything else is changed, the icons are painted, not on wood but on canvas, after foreign models; for instance, the image of Emmanuel the Saviour is quite like a German, fat, as if conceived in the flesh; the fleshy type is preferred, the celestial nature is ignored. The churches are no longer built after the ancient style, but with pointed towers like those in Germany, and the chimes even imitate Lutheran organs.
Poor Russia! Why dost thou set thy heart on German ways and actions?
There are to be no more monasteries; a decree is being prepared which will prohibit the taking of fresh vows; retired soldiers will fill the vacancies in the monasteries. It is written “He who comes to me I will in no wise cast out;” but they consider the scriptures as nothing.
As there is a military code, so now there exists a code of faith.
What sort of prayer can that be, which is enforced by a decree, under pain of punishment?
Beggars are to taken be up, ruthlessly beaten with rods, and sent to hard labour, so that they may not eat their bread unearned. This is the Tsar’s decree, while Christ says, “For I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat. I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink, I was a stranger and ye took me not in, naked and ye clothed me not. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”
The whole of Russia is dying of spiritual famine. The sower does not scatter the seed, the earth does not receive it. The priests do not keep watch over the people who go astray. The village priest cannot be distinguished from a moujik. The moujik ploughs, the priest ploughs. And meanwhile Christians die like cattle. Drunken priests use obscene language and rail at one another within the sanctuary; they wear a pall of gold, while their bast shoes are dirty; the holy loaves are made of black rye flour; the Lord’s holy host is kept in exceedingly vile vessels swarming with bugs, cockroaches, and grasshoppers. Monks have fallen into habits of tippling and stealing.
The whole monastic and priestly system calls for thorough reform, as there hardly remains a trace of the true priest and monk.
We are guilty of neither keeping our religion, such as it is, nor maintaining our clergy in decency, but of living almost like brutes. I doubt whether in Moscow one in a hundred knows what the Orthodox belief is, or who God is, or how to pray to Him, or how to fulfil His holy will.
There is no sign of Christianity left to us except the name.
We have all lost our senses, we tremble in our faith, like a leaf on a tree; we have gone astray in strange and diverse ways, some incline towards the Roman faith, others towards the Lutheran; we, baptized idol-worshippers, are maimed in both legs. We have forsaken the paps of our mother Church; we are seeking nourishment instead from all kinds of foreign and heretical sources. We are like blind puppies which have been thrown away, we err in all directions; but where we shall finally arrive, no one knows.
Fomka the barber, an iconoclast, has split up the image of St. Alexis the Metropolitan with his iron axe, because he did not revere the holy icons, the life-bringing cross, nor holy relics; the holy icons, said he, and the holy cross are merely the work of man; and he did not believe that relics brought pardon for his own transgressions. Neither did he accept the Church dogma and traditions, nor did he believe the Eucharist to be the true body of Christ, but simply bread and wine.
Stephen, the Metropolitan of Riazan, handed Fomka over to the church anathema. He was burnt at the stake in the Red Square.
Then the gentlemen of the Senate, having summoned the Metropolitan to Petersburg to account for his action, gave satisfaction to the heretics; the iconoclast, Dmitri Tveretinoff, a physician, whose disciple Fomka had been, they pronounced innocent, while driving Stephen, the saintly bishop, with great contumely from the Judgment hall. He went out weeping and saying:—
“O Lord Christ, our Saviour! Thou hast said: ‘They will persecute you, even as they persecuted me.’ Now I am driven out, but not I, it is Thou whom they are persecuting. Thou, who beholdest all things, wilt see that their judgment is unjust; judge them Thyself!”
And when the prelate came out of the senate into the square, all the people were moved with compassion towards him and wept. The anger of the author of my being against Stephen has grown more intense.
The Church is more powerful than the Tsardom; but nowadays the Tsar rules the Church.
The ancient Tsars bowed to the ground before the patriarch; now the occupant of the Patriarchal throne signs himself in his letters to the Tsar, thus: “Your Majesty’s slave and footstool, your humble Stephen, the little Shepherd of Riazan!” The head of the Church the Tsar’s footstool!
Demetrius, the Metropolitan of Rostov, was a very saintly man; when the author of my being made him drink Hungarian wine, and began questioning him on clerical affairs, the saintly old man did not answer at all, but silently and repeatedly blessed the Tsar with the sign of the holy cross, and thus he succeeded in escaping.
The priests say, “It is impossible to swim against the stream; the whip cannot break the axe.”
But the martyrs for the sake of the faith did not spare their lives!
The Tsar keeps his table for the bishops. “He whose bread I eat, his man I am.”
The ancient Russian prelates stood up for their country, but the prelates of to-day do not seek to obtain justice from the Tsar, but aim rather at flattering and corrupting his pious rank and power.
If the people sin, the Tsar can divert God’s wrath; if the Tsar sins, the people are helpless. God visits the sin of the monarch upon the whole country.
Lately at a drinking feast, the “little Shepherd of Riazan” said to my father: “You Tsars—gods on earth—are like unto the Heavenly Tsar,” and the Kniaz-Pope, a drunken fool, reviled the prelate: “Though I,” said he, “am but a mock patriarch, yet even I would not have spoken such words to the Tsar! God is greater than the Tsar,” and the Tsar praised the buffoon for saying this.
When in the course of the same feast, the bishops began to talk about the widowed state of the Church and the need of a Patriarch, the author of my being in great wrath unsheathed his short sword; all were terror stricken, thinking he was going to kill them; he struck the table with the flat of the blade, and shouted: “I am the Patriarch; Tsar and Patriarch in one!”
Theodosius is trying to persuade the author of my being to assume the title of Emperor, after the example of the ancient Roman Caesars.
In the year 1709, during the celebrations of the Poltava victory, the clergy erected on the Red Square in Moscow an imitation of a Roman temple with an altar, consecrating it to the virtues of the Russian god Apollo and Mars, that is in honour of the author of my being, and over the ancient temple ran the inscription:—“Basis et fundamentum reipublicae, religio.”
But what religion? Faith in what God, or gods?
There was also represented an “Apotheosis of the Russian Hercules,” that is, the author of my days slaying many animals and peoples, and, at the end of these feats, being borne up to heaven in Jove’s chariot, drawn by eagles along the Milky Way, with the inscription:—“Viamque affectat Olympo.”
In the pamphlet, written by the arch-monk Joseph, the Prefect of the Academy, the Apotheosis is described in the following words: “It should be known that this is neither a church, nor a sanctuary built to a saint, but a political or civil ceremony.”
Theodosius is trying to persuade my father to insert in the decree, which ordained the holy Synod, or in the Russian oath of allegiance itself, words declaring that, “The people should honour their ruler’s name as head and father of their country equally with the name of Jesus Christ.”
Men want to usurp God’s glory and the honour due to Christ, the Eternal and only King of kings. It is in the Roman Laws that these impious sacrilegious words are found: “The Roman autocrat is the Lord of the Universe.”
We confess and believe that Christ alone is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and there is no man Lord beside him.
Jesus Christ, the wondrous Rock, struck and destroyed the Roman Empire and smashed its feet of clay. And we create and build up what God has shattered. Does not this mean that we defy God?
Look at Roman History. The Emperor Caligula saith: Everything is allowed to Caesar, “Omnia licent.” Not only to Roman Emperors, but nowadays to all knaves and servile creatures and quadrupeds, is everything permitted!
Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon saith, “I am God,” and he became a beast.
On Basil Island, in the house of the Tsaritsa Prascovie, there lives an old monk, Timothy Arkhípich, he is the refuge of the desperate, the hope of the hopeless, a mad man in the eyes of the world, yet he is intimately acquainted with the griefs and hearts of men. I went over to see him a few nights ago and had a talk with him. Arkhípich says Antichrist is a pretender—a veritable cursed one—and that he is on his way. I read the Metropolitan of Riazan’s Signs of the Coming of Antichrist, and a great fear thereupon possessed me.
In Moscow, Gregory of Talitsa was burnt because he spoke to the people about the coming of Antichrist. Talitsa was a man of great intelligence. Basil Levin, a captain of the Dragoons who was with me on my way from Lvoff to Kiev in 1711, the priest Lebedka, chaplain to Prince Ménshikoff the clerk Larion Dokoukin, and many others think in the same way about Antichrist.
A Raskolnik spilt Christ’s sacrament and trampled it under foot.
Near Lubetch a flight of locusts appeared; from midday to midnight it was passing—“God’s Wrath,” the superscription on their wings.
The days are short and gloomy; old people say the sun shines no longer as it used to.
I was drunk; we drank a large quantity of vodka. The Lord knows it is fear which makes us drink, in order to forget ourselves.
The fear of death has come upon me. The end is at hand, the axe is at the root, death’s scythe is over our heads.
Lord, help Russia! Thrice-pure Mother of God protect and intercede for us!
O martyrs of these latter days, Christ is about to rise again! Christ is, and will dwell within you, and you will say, Amen! to His Kingdom.
CHAPTER III
THE DIARY OF FRÄULEIN ARNHEIM
With these words the diary of Tsarevitch Alexis closed. I was present when he threw it into the fire.
December 31.
To-day died the last Russian Tsaritsa. Marfa Matveevna, the widow of Peter’s stepbrother, Fédor Alexeyevitch. At foreign courts she had been considered dead long ago; ever since her husband’s death, during thirty-two years, she had lived half mad, a prisoner in her rooms, and never showed herself to anybody.
She was buried at dusk with great pomp. The funeral procession moved between two rows of torches planted in the ice all the way along from her house, (she lived next to us near the Church of All the Sorrowing) up to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, across the Neva on the ice. It was the same way along which her Highness’s body had been borne two months or more ago in the frigate of death. Then the first foreign Princess was buried, now the last Russian Tsaritsa.
First came the clergy in gorgeous palls, carrying candles and incense burners, chanting funeral songs. The coffin was drawn on sleighs. Behind it walked the Privy Councillor Tolstoi carrying a crown set with priceless gems.
The Tsar had for the first time at this funeral prohibited the ancient Russian custom of wailing; it was strictly ordered that none should cry aloud.
All moved along in silence, the night was still, nothing was heard but the crackling of the burning resin, the crunching of steps on the snow, and the funeral chanting. This silent procession aroused a shudder of terror. It seemed as though we were gliding along the ice after the dead, ourselves also dead, into the black eternal gloom.
With this old Tsaritsa New Russia seemed to be burying Old Russia, and Petersburg burying Moscow.
The Tsarevitch, who had loved the deceased as his own mother, was terribly upset by this death. He sees in it a bad omen for himself, his own fate. Several times during the ceremony he whispered to me, “The end has come, the end of everything!”
January 1.
To-morrow morning I leave Petersburg, together with the two Barons Loewenwold for Riga, and then travel through Danzig into Germany. This is my last night in the Tsarevitch’s house.
This evening I went to bid him good-bye; the way we parted made me feel how much I love him, and that I will never forget him.
“Who knows,” said he, “we may meet again. I would like to pay another visit to Germany and other foreign countries; I liked those parts, you live in gaiety and light and freedom.”
“What holds your Highness back?”
He sighed heavily.
“I would like to go to heaven; it is my sins which keep me back.” And then he added with his genuine child-like smile, “The Lord keep you, Fräulein Juliana, do not remember my worst; greet the European countries for me, and your old friend Leibnitz. May be he will prove to be in the right, and that we shall, with God’s help, not eat, but serve one another.”
He embraced and kissed my forehead with brotherly tenderness.
I could not help crying. Once more I turned round and had a last look at him, and again my heart sank with a presentiment, just as on that day when I saw in the dark, and as it were prophetic mirror, the face of Charlotte and Alexis, when both had seemed to me to be victims doomed to some great suffering. She had perished, now his turn had come. And then I recalled him as he stood the last day in Roshdestveno, on the dove-cote, high up over the sullen wood against the blood-red sky, as it were wrapt in the white doves’ wings. So he will ever remain in my memory.
I hear that prisoners set free sometimes regret their prison. I experience a kindred feeling at the present moment with regard to Russia. I began this diary with curses. I cannot close it with blessings. I will only say, what probably many in Europe would say, were they better acquainted with Russia—“A mysterious country—a mysterious people.”