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

IMPERIAL LEGERDEMAIN.209

have required infinite precaution, works among us as if by enchantment."

The courtier-like governor had the modesty to forbear adding a word in favour of his own good management; he equally avoided giving me any occasion to allude to what evil tongues are continually repeating to me in secret, namely, that every financial measure of the kind just taken by the Russian government, gives to the superior authority means of profit, which it well knows how to use, but of which no one dares openly to complain under autocratic rule. I am ignorant of the secret manoeuvres to which recourse has been had on this occasion; but to give myself an idea of them, I imagine the situation of a man who has deposited with another a considerable sum of money. If the receiver has the power to triple the value of each piece of coin of which the sum is composed, it is clear that he can return the deposit, and all the while retain two thirds of the amount deposited. I do not say that such has been the actual result of the measure ordained by the emperor, but I admit the supposition, among many others, to aid me in comprehending the insinuations, or, if you like, the calumnies of the malcontents. They, indeed, add that the profit of this so suddenly executed operation, which consists in depriving, by a decree, the paper-money of a part of its ancient value, to increase in the same proportion that of the silver rouble, is designed to compensate the private treasury of the sovereign for the sums which it was necessary to draw from it, in order to re-build, at his own cost, his winter-palace, and to refuse, with a magnanimity which Europe and Russia have admired, the offers of