Though infinitely more civilised than the old Russian noble as described by Clarke, "unwashed, unshaven, eating raw turnip and drinking quass" (for according to the Doctor, in 1799, "raw turnips were handed about in slices in the first houses, on a silver salver, with brandy as a whet before dinner"), he was a fair average specimen of a fine old Muscovite gentleman "all of the olden time," who had a cat-o'-nine-tails always at hand; who generally unbuttoned his vest when the gold cup was brought, in which he drank his pink champagne or rare Hungarian wine, which he always had in equal plenty with his fiery vodka and bitter quass; who reckoned his silver roubles by sacksful, and his Sclavonian souls by thousands; and who, though by no means a bad fellow, as his imperious and outrageous class go in Russia, had still the somewhat czarish notion, that true nobility "means the privilege of being treated like a human being of intelligence and feeling, and of treating others as if they were nothing of the kind."
Scandal said that in his wild youth he had flogged his serfs to fight with his favourite bear, and flogged them again if they maltreated or bit Bruin too much: Balgonie certainly saw two or three old serfs who had lost an ear in these combats. And when the Count took his afternoon nap, if a cock crowed in the village, a dog barked, or a cat mewed, the whole community were wont to tremble, when the stout dvornick, or house-porter, was seen to issue forth with his cat-o'-nine-tails in search of the proprietor.
A rich sash usually girt the waist of his old-fashioned tunic, which was of fine cloth, and trimmed with fur, broad or narrow according to the season; a square cap of crimson velvet, tasselled with gold and edged with ermine as white as his beard, was placed diagonally on his head, when he went abroad; and then he carried a long gold-headed cane, with the exact weight of which most of the shoulders in the neighbourhood were perfectly familiar. On holy festivals the breast of his best velvet coat was always covered by orders of the empire; a dozen of servants usually hovered about him when he dined; and he always went to church and confession in a clumsy old coach drawn by six white horses, three abreast, in honour of the Holy Trinity.
He was proud of being one of the old hereditary nobles, who are distinguished from the personal nobility by their right to possess serfs, and to whose earthly tyranny there was no limit, save the tomb. All the wretched serf possessed, even his wife, was the property of his lord. Fear of secret murder alone protected the latter species of property; hence no wonder is it that the land is without a middle class. Even in the present century, Heber, in his Journal, mentions an instance of a Russian noble who, in his profane cruelty and lust of power, nailed a servant on a cross, for which he was only imprisoned in a monastery.
But in the character of Count Mierowitz, there was something of the rough and hardy country gentleman. He it was who caught with his own hands, and in his own forests by the Louga, the famous team of brown bears which, in the marriage procession of the late Empress Elizabeth's jester, drew that jocular personage and his bride, when the newly-wedded couple proceeded to the wonderful palace of ice (which was built on the frozen Neva), all the ornaments of which were icicles, and the appurtenances of which were also ice, even to the cannon which were fired, and did not burst.
"When Peter the Great came to the throne," said he, one day, "he found only two lawyers in all Russia; so, Captain Balgonie, he hung one as an example to the other. Ah, he was a truly great man, Peter! The English admire him solely because he tried to imitate them; but, for that very reason, we don't approve of many of his innovations. We look from the north and south sides of the same hedge."
It is not surprising that Charlie Balgonie preferred the society of two beautiful young girls to that of a testy old boyar. To enhance their natural attractions and winning manners, they were always dressed in the most fashionable French mode, and wore the rich stuffs which came from Moscow, and even from China.
They and he had many topics in common, on which they could converse, after old Count Mierowitz had dined and dozed off to sleep—such as the theatre erected some years before at Yaroslaff, by Volkoff, whose troupe were now performing the tragedies of Soumorokoff at St. Petersburg, where a government theatre had just been erected by a ukase; while another ennobled the manager, Volkoff, who had died last year, after appearing at Moscow in Zelmira. Their knowledge of French and German opened up the best literature of Europe to the two cousins, which was fortunate; for at the period of our narrative, Russia had almost none, save some barbarous national songs, fabulous ecclesiastical records, and ferocious traditions: nor is she now much advanced in letters, though certainly, two months after publication, Charles Dickens may be read at Tobolsk—that terrible Tobolsk—where, as we have all read in our youth, Elizabeth wept such grateful tears on the bosom of her Smoloff.
Exiled from court, and secluded amid these forests by the Louga, a Russian lady had few resources for amusement then; so the unexpected visit of Captain Balgonie, with whose name and courage they were quite familiar, proved a most welcome and fortunate circumstance to those two handsome girls, who were merely enduring life, or simply vegetating, in the great old mansion of Count Mierowitz.
But there was one topic in which our soldier of fortune could by no means agree with Natalie Mierowna—her bitter and most unwise hostility to the strongly-established power of the Empress, or, as she styled her, "the woman who now occupied the throne of Ivan;" a prince whom she viewed exactly as the Scottish Jacobites did "the Young Chevalier," and a few old Frenchmen do at the present hour, "Henry V.," the descendant of St. Louis. These sentiments, however, she had to utter in secret, or when none were by them; and when he gazed into her dark and beautiful eyes, so full of romantic enthusiasm and of dangerous light, he felt thankful that one so peerless and so perilous was not, at all events, his enemy.