L.

While our travellers are completing the last stage of their journey, we will precede them to St. Petersburg, and transport our readers for a short time among scenes very different from those in which the incidents of our story have hitherto occurred.

The sentence of condemnation has been pronounced, and for some days the names of the five persons who were to suffer death have been known and privately circulated; privately, for the trials which excited universal interest were seldom discussed in society. At that epoch (different in this respect from a subsequent one, when liberty to say anything was allowed in Russia before anywhere else), whether through prudence, servility, or a fear resulting from the reign of the Emperor Paul, rather than the one just ended, every one refrained with common accord from any public expression of opinion whatever respecting the acts of the government. Flattery itself was cautious not to excite discussions that might give rise to criticism. The sovereign authority did not require approval, but only to be obeyed, not judged. This was generally understood, and the consequence was a general silence respecting forbidden topics; whereas, on every other subject, as if by way of indemnification, Russian wit was unrestrained, and so keen that the nation which prides itself on being the most spirituelle in the world found a rival, and only consoled itself by saying Russian wit was borrowed. It is incontestably certain that, though there were still some survivors of the time of Catherine's reign, the French language was now so universally used in society at St. Petersburg, that people of the highest rank, of both sexes, spoke it to the exclusion of their own tongue, and wrote it with such uncommon perfection as to enrich French literature; whereas they would have been [pg 460] very much embarrassed if required to write the most insignificant note, or even a mere business letter, in the Russian language.

There is no intention of discussing here the causes that led to this engrafting of foreign habits, or of examining whether the Russians at that period, in imitating the French, were always mindful that when others are copied it should be from their best side. Still less would it be suitable to consider whether the people who possess the faculty of assimilation to such a degree are the most noble, the most energetic, and the most sincere. This would lead us far beyond our modest limits, to which we return by observing that, in spite of a splendor and magnificence almost beyond conception, in spite of a tone of good taste and a courtesy now almost extinct in France, in spite of hospitality on a grand scale, characteristic of Slavonic countries, an indefinable restraint, felt by all, prevailed in this attractive and brilliant circle, insinuating itself everywhere like an invisible spectre, modifying and directing the current of conversation—even the most trifling—and affecting not only the intercourse of fashionable life, but the freedom of friendly converse and the very outpourings of affectionate confidence.

The Marquis Adelardi had had several opportunities of mingling in this society, and found it congenial. It was a society in which he was specially adapted to shine, for he, too, as we are aware, had passed his life in a school of enforced silence; and, if he was formerly numbered among those who revolt under such restrictions, he had now renounced all efforts to break through them, and learned to turn his attention elsewhere. He understood, better than any other foreigner at St. Petersburg, how to navigate amid the shoals of conversation; to be entertaining, agreeable, interesting, and even apparently bold without ever causing embarrassment by an inadvertent remark; and if, in the ardor of discourse, he approached a dangerous limit, the promptness with which he read an unexpressed thought sufficed to make him change, with easy nonchalance, the direction of a conversation in which he seemed to be the most interested.

He was not, however, disposed to talk with any one the day, or rather the evening, we meet him again—this time at the Countess de G——'s, a woman of superior intellect, already advanced in years, whose salon was one of the most brilliant and most justly popular in St. Petersburg. Everything, indeed, was calculated to facilitate social intercourse of every degree, and, if there was a place where the bounds we have just referred to were invisible, though never forgotten, it was here. What could not be said aloud here, more than elsewhere, had a thousand facilities for private utterance. On the other hand, for the benefit of prudent people who preferred to say nothing at all, there were tables where they could play whist or a game of chess. A piano at one end of the spacious salon was always open to attract amateur performers, then more numerous than now, when no one ventures, even in the family circle, to play without unusual ability.

In this friendly atmosphere, our marquis, generally so social, was silent and preoccupied. Seated in a corner on a sofa where no one else was sitting, he took no part in the general conversation. And yet, as the room filled, and various groups were formed, here and there foreigners, and especially the members of the diplomatic corps who frequented the [pg 461] house, broached the great topic, and by degrees were heard on various sides the names of Mouravieff, Ryleieff, Pestel, and two others likewise condemned to death, as well as the names of those who were to be exiled—a punishment almost as terrible.

A young German attaché, perceiving Adelardi, approached, and took a seat beside him. “And Walden,” said he in a low voice, “have you not had permission to see him twice?”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen him since he was informed of his fate?”