The heat being considerable, I often went with my daughter for early walks on the island of Krestovski. The extreme point of this island seemed to merge into the sea, on which large vessels were navigating. Sometimes we went there in the evening to see the Russian peasants dance, their national dress being very picturesque. I remember, on the subject of the excessive heat often prevailing at St. Petersburg, a certain day in the month of July of some year in which that month was hotter than in Italy. On this day I saw Princess Dolgoruki's mother, Princess Bariatinski, who was once as lovely as an angel, and whose clever and spontaneous wit rendered her one of the most fascinating women of St. Petersburg, established in her cellar, with her lady's companion seated on the bottom step, very quietly reading to her from a book.
But to return to the island of Krestovski. Taking a row in a boat one day, we came upon a crowd of men and women all bathing together. We even saw from a distance young men naked on horseback, who were thus bathing with their horses. In any other country one would have been shocked by this, but the Russian people are really primitively ingenuous. In the winter husband, wife and children sleep together on the stove; if the stove is not large enough, they lie on wooden benches lining their hut, wrapped up simply in their sheepskins. These good people have kept the customs of the ancient patriarchs.
A walk which pleased me particularly was one on the island of Zelaguin, which, though it had once been a very handsome garden, was now deserted. However, there remained some lovely trees, charming avenues, a temple surrounded with magnificent weeping willows, flowers to please the eye, little running streams, and bridges after the English fashion. In order to enjoy this walk to the full, I took a little house opposite on the bank of the Neva. The advantageous situation of my cottage was combined with pleasing diversion, due to the fact that most of the boats, of which there was an unceasing procession up and down the river, gave me a continuous concert of vocal music or wind instruments.
The artillery general, Melissimo, lived in a pretty house close to mine, and I enjoyed having him for my neighbour, since he was the best and most obliging of men. As the General had spent much time in Turkey, his house was a model of Oriental comfort and luxury. There was a bathroom lighted from above, in the middle of which was a basin large enough to hold a dozen people. One went down into the water by steps. Linen to be used for drying the body after bathing was hung on a golden balustrade circling the basin, and consisted of large pieces of Indian mull worked at the bottom in flowers and gold, so that the weight of this embroidery caused the mull to adhere to the skin, which appeared to me an elaborate refinement. Round the room ran a broad divan on which one could stretch oneself and rest after taking a bath, and one of the doors opened from a sweet little sitting-room. This sitting-room, again, overlooked an odorous flower-bed, and some of the stems grew to the height of the window. It was in this room that the General gave us a breakfast of fruits, cream cheese and excellent Mocha coffee, on all of which my daughter regaled herself royally. Another time he asked us to a very good dinner, and had it served under a Turkish tent brought back from one of his journeys. The tent was put up on the lawn facing the house. There were twelve of us, all seated by the table on splendid divans. We were served with delicious fruits at dessert. The whole dinner was quite Asiatic, and the General's courtesy added to the savour of all the good things. I wish, however, that he had omitted firing off cannon shots in our immediate proximity just as we were sitting down at table, but I was informed that such was the custom with all generals. I took my little house on the Neva for one summer only. The next, young Count Strogonoff lent me one at Kaminstroff, where I was very well suited. Every morning I walked alone in a neighbouring wood and passed my evenings with Countess Golovin, my neighbour. There I met young Prince Bariatinski, Princess Tarent, and various other congenial people. We would chat or have readings until supper time. In fact time was speeding by for me in the most agreeable manner.
The Russian people lived very happily under the rule of Catherine; by great and lowly have I heard the name of her blessed to whom the nation owed so much glory and so much well-being. I do not speak of the conquests by which the national vanity was so prodigiously flattered, but of the real, lasting good that this Empress did her people. During the space of the thirty-four years she reigned, her beneficent genius fathered or furthered all that was useful, all that was grand. She erected an immortal monument to Peter I.; she built two hundred and thirty-seven towns in stone, saying that wooden villages cost much more because they burned down so often; she covered the sea with her fleets; she established everywhere manufactories and banks, highly propitious to the commerce of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Tobolsk; she granted new privileges to the Academy; she founded schools in all the towns and the country districts; she dug canals, built granite quays, gave a legal code, instituted an asylum for foundlings, and, finally, introduced into her empire the boon of vaccination, adopted by the Russians solely through her mighty will, and, for the public encouragement, was the first to be inoculated.
Catherine herself was the source of all these blessings, for she never allowed any one else real authority. She dictated her own despatches to her ministers, who, in effect, were but her secretaries. I am much annoyed that the Duchess d'Abrantès, who has recently published a work on Catherine II., has either not read what the Prince de Ligne and the Count de Ségur have written, or has not given credence to those irrefutable witnesses. If she had, she would have more justly appreciated and admired the qualities distinguishing that great Empress, considering her as a ruler, and she would have paid more respect to the memory of a woman in whom our sex ought to take pride for so many reasons.
THE DUCHESS DE POLIGNAC.
Catherine II. loved everything that was magnificent in the arts. At the Hermitage she built a set of rooms corresponding to certain rooms in the Vatican, and had copies made of the fifty pictures by Raphael adorning those rooms. She enriched the Academy of Fine Arts with plaster casts of the finest ancient statues and with a large number of paintings by various masters. The Hermitage, which she had founded and erected quite near her palace, was a model of good taste in every respect, and made the clumsy architecture of the imperial palace at St. Petersburg appear to worse advantage than ever by the contrast. It is well known that she wrote French with great facility. In the library at St. Petersburg I saw the original manuscript of the legal code she gave the Russians written entirely in her own hand and in the French language. Her style, I was told, was elegant and very concise, and this reminds me of an instance of her laconic manner of expression which seems to me quite delightful. When General Suvaroff had won the battle of Warsaw, Catherine at once sent him a messenger, and this messenger brought the fortunate victor nothing but an envelope on which she had written with her own hand, "To Marshal Suvaroff."