Moscow is at least ten miles round. The Moskva cuts through the town, and is joined by two other small streams, and it is really an astonishing sight—all those palaces, those finely sculptured public monuments, those convents, those churches, all intermingled with pretty landscapes and villages. This mixture of urban magnificence and rural simplicity produces an extraordinary, fantastic effect, which must please the traveller who is in search of something new. The churches are so numerous in this city that a popular saying runs: "Moscow with its forty times forty churches." Moscow is supposed to contain 420,000 inhabitants, and commerce must be on a large scale, because in a single quarter, whose name I have forgotten, there are six thousand shops. In the quarter called the Kremlin there stands the fortress of the same name, the old palace of the czars. This fortress is as ancient as the town, said to have been built about the middle of the twelfth century, and is situated on an elevation at the foot of which flows the Moskva, but there is nothing remarkable in the style excepting its antiquity. Close to this pile, whose walls are flanked with towers, I was shown a bell of colossal dimensions half-embedded in the ground, and I was told it had never been possible to raise it in order to hang it in the palace chapel.
The cemeteries at Moscow are stupendous, and following the custom prevailing all over Russia, several times a year, but especially on the day that in Russia corresponds to our Death Day, the cemeteries are filled with vast crowds. Men and women kneel at their family tombs, and there give vent to loud lamentations, which may be heard a long way off.
A habit as universal in Moscow as in St. Petersburg is the taking of steam baths. There are some for women and some for men, only when the men have taken their bath, coming out of it as red as scarlet, they go out and roll in the snow in the most extreme cold. To this habit the vigour and sound health of the Russians have been attributed. It is very certain they know nothing of chest maladies or rheumatism.
A pleasant walk in Moscow is the market, which is always to be found provisioned with the rarest and most excellent fruits. It is in the middle of a garden, and is traversed by a broad avenue which renders the place fascinating. It is quite proper for the greatest ladies to go there and do their buying in person. In summer they repair thither in carriages, and in winter in sledges.
I had observed that in St. Petersburg society formed, so to speak, a single family, all the members of the nobility being cousins to one another. At Moscow, where the population and the nobility are far more numerous, society becomes almost the public. For instance, you will find six thousand persons in the ballroom where the first families meet. Around this room runs a colonnade on a platform a few feet above the ground, where the persons who are not dancing can promenade, and adjoining are various apartments in which people sup or play cards. I went to one of these balls, and was surprised at the quantity of pretty women I found assembled. I can say the same for a ball to which Marshal Soltikoff invited me. The young women were nearly all of remarkable beauty. They had imitated the antique costume I had suggested to the Grand Duchess Elisabeth for Catherine II.'s ball. They wore cashmere tunics edged with gold fringes; gorgeous jewels held their short upturned sleeves in place; their Greek head-dresses were for the most part tied with bands adorned with diamonds. Nothing could have been more stylish or luxurious than these costumes; they beautified even this class of lovely women, of whom no one was prettier than the next. One I especially observed was a young person soon after married to Prince Tufakin. Her face, whose features were regular and delicate, wore an excessively melancholy expression. After her marriage I began her portrait, but was only able to finish the head in Moscow, so that I carried off the picture to finish it at St. Petersburg, where, however, I before long heard of the death of that charming young lady. She was scarcely more than seventeen years old. I painted her as Iris, seated on some clouds, with a billowy scarf about her.
MADAME VIGÉE LEBRUN.
Mme. Soltikoff kept one of the best houses in Moscow. I had paid her a call upon arrival. She and her husband, who was then Governor of the town, showed me great kindness. She asked me to paint the Marshal's portrait, and her daughter's, who had married Count Gregory Orloff, son of Count Vladimir. At this time I was doing a picture of Countess Strogonoff's daughter, so that by the end of ten or twelve days I had begun six portraits, without counting the likeness of the good and genial Mme. Ducrest de Villeneuve, whom I was charmed to meet again in Moscow, and who was so pretty that I insisted on painting her. An accident that might have cost me my life deprived me of the use of my studio and retarded the completion of all these works.
I was enjoying perfect peace in the house loaned me by Countess Strogonoff, but, as it had not been inhabited for seven years, it was horribly cold. I remedied the evil as far as possible by heating all the stoves to the utmost. In spite of this measure, I was obliged to leave the fire lit in my bedroom at night, and was so frozen in bed, with the shutters hermetically closed, to say nothing of a small lamp burning near me to moderate the air, that I tied my pillow all round my head with a ribbon, at the risk of being stifled. One night, when I had succeeded in going to sleep, I was awakened by suffocating smoke. I barely had time to ring for my maid, who declared that she had put out all the fires. I told her to open the passage door. Scarcely had she obeyed when her candle went out, and my room and the whole apartment was filled with thick, sickening smoke. We broke the windows as fast as we could. Not knowing where this dreadful smoke came from, it may well be imagined how anxious I was. I then sent for one of the men who lit the fires, and he informed me that another man had forgotten to open the cover capping the pipes, which is on the roof, I think. Relieved from the alarm of having set Countess Strogonoff's house on fire, I went to look at my rooms, all upset that I was. Near the room where I gave my sittings was a large stove with two doors, in front of which I had put Marshal Soltikoff's picture to dry. I found this portrait so thoroughly scorched that I was obliged to do it over again. But what gave me most pain in this night of trouble was my inability to have removed at once a collection of pictures by various great masters, sent me by my husband; they, of course, suffered very much.