Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

136VISIT TO THE GOVERNOR.

This morning, about eleven, the governor's son, who is a mere child, arrived in full uniform, to take me in a carriage-and-fonr, with coachman, and faleiter mounted on the off-side horse, an equipage precisely similar to that of the courtiers at Petersburg. This elegant ajmarition at the door of my inn disappointed me; I saw at once that it was not with old Muscovites, with true boyards, that I had to do. I felt that I should be again among European travellers, courtiers of the Emperor Alexander, and lordly cosmopolites.

" My father knows Paris," said the young man; " he will be delighted to see a Frenchman."

" At what period was he in France ? "

The young Russian was silent; my question appeared to disconcert him, although I had thought it a very simple one : at first I was unable to account for his embarrassment; after discovering its cause, I gave him credit for an exquisite delicacy, — a rare sentiment in every country and at every age.

M., governor of Yaroslaf, had visited France,

in the suite of the Emperor Alexander, during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, and this was a reminiscence of which his son was unwilling to remind me. His tact recalled to my memory a very different trait. One day, in a small town of Germany, I dined with the envoy of a petty German government, who, in presenting me to his wife, said that I was a Frenchman.

" He's an enemy, then," interrupted their son, a boy of apparently thirteen or fourteen years old.

That young gentleman had not been sent to school in Russia.