I then resolved to leave for Moscow. I wanted a change from St. Petersburg, where I had been suffering to such a degree that my health was affected. Not that after the wedding the wretched stories which had been brought up against me left any impression. On the contrary, the people who had blackened my character most repented of their injustice. However, I was unable to shake off the memory of the past months. I felt miserable, but kept my trouble to myself; I complained of no one. I observed silence, even with my dearest friends, on the subject of my daughter and the man she had given me for a son, going so far as reticence toward my brother, to whom I had written frequently since being apprised by him of another misfortune. Indeed, this period of my life was devoted to tears: we had lost our mother.

Hoping, then, to obtain relief from so much sorrow through distraction and a change of scene, I hastened the life-sized portrait I was then doing of the Empress Maria, as well as several half-length portraits, and left for Moscow on the 15th of October, 1800.

CHAPTER XII
Moscow

JOURNEY TO MOSCOW — A BAD SMELL AND ITS ORIGIN — FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MOSCOW — ANOTHER IMPRESSION, ORAL AND UNPLEASING — THE KREMLIN — STEAM-AND-SNOW BATHING — SOCIETY — LUXURIOUS PRINCE KURAKIN — AN IMPOSSIBLE DUOLOGUE — EXAMPLES OF RUSSIAN CLEVERNESS — DETERMINATION TO RETURN TO FRANCE.

No more dreadful fatigue can be imagined than that which awaited me in the journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The roads I counted upon as being frozen—as I had been led to believe—were not yet in that condition. The roads, in fact, were terrible; the logs, which rendered them almost impracticable in severe weather, not being as yet fixed by the frost, rolled incessantly under the wheels, and produced the same effect as waves of the sea. My carriage was half-covered with mud, and gave us such terrible shocks that at every moment I expected to give up the ghost. For the sake of some relief from this torture, I stopped half-way at the inn of Novgorod, the only one on the route, where—so I had been informed—I should be well fed and lodged. Being greatly in want of rest, and faint with hunger, I asked for a room. Hardly was I installed when I noticed a pestilential smell that made me sick. The master of the inn, whom I begged to change my room, had no other to give me, and I therefore resigned myself. But soon, seeming to observe that the intolerable stench came from a glazed door in the room, I called for a waiter, and questioned him as to the door. "Oh!" he calmly replied, "there has been a dead man behind that door since yesterday. That is probably what you smell." I waited for no further particulars, got up, had my horses harnessed, and started, taking nothing with me but a piece of bread to continue my journey to Moscow.

I had accomplished but half of the journey whose second part was to be more fatiguing than the first. Not that there were any high hills, but the road consisted of perpetual ups and downs—which I called torture. The climax to my annoyance was that I could not amuse myself with a view of the country through which I was travelling, since a thick fog veiled the scene on all sides, and this always depresses me. If one considers, besides these tribulations, the diet I was restricted to after I had eaten my piece of bread, it will readily be conceived that I must have found the road very long.

At length I arrived in the former immense capital of Russia. I seemed to be entering Ispahan, of which place I had seen several drawings, so much does the aspect of Moscow differ from everything else in Europe. Nor will I attempt to describe the effect of those thousands of gilded cupolas surmounted with huge gold crosses, those broad streets, those superb palaces, for the most part situated so far asunder that villages intervened. To obtain a right idea of Moscow, you must see it.

I was driven to the mansion which M. Dimidoff had been kind enough to lend me. This enormous building had in front of it a large courtyard surrounded by very high railings. It was untenanted, and I promised myself perfect peace. After all my fatigue and my forced diet, my first concern, as soon as I had appeased my hunger, was, of course, to sleep. But, bad luck to it! at five o'clock in the morning I was awakened with a start by an infernal din. A large troop of those Russian musicians who only blow one note each on their horns had established themselves in the room next to mine to practise. Perhaps the room was very spacious and the only one suitable for this kind of rehearsal. I was careful to inquire of the porter if this music was played every day. Upon his answer that, the palace being uninhabited, the largest apartment had been devoted to this purpose, I resolved to make no change in the customs of a house that was not my own, and to look for another lodging.

In one of my first expeditions I called on the Countess Strogonoff, the wife of my good old friend. I found her hoisted on the top of some very high affair which did nothing but rock to and fro. I could not imagine how she could endure this perpetual motion, but she wanted it for her health, as she was unable to walk. But this did not prevent her being agreeable to me. I spoke to her of the embarrassment I was in on account of lodgings. She at once told me she had a pretty house that was not occupied, and begged me to accept it, but because she would hear nothing of my paying a rent, I positively declined the offer. Seeing that her efforts were in vain, she sent for her daughter, who was very pretty, and asked me to paint this young person's portrait in payment of rent, to which I agreed with pleasure. Thus, a few days later, I settled in a house where I hoped to find quiet, since I was to live there alone.

So soon as I was established in my new dwelling, I visited the town as often as the rigours of the season would permit. For during the five months I spent at Moscow, the snow never melted; it deprived me of the pleasure of seeing the environments, said to be admirable.