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

278ADVICE OF A RUSSIAN.

" There are, then, no means of gaining access to the dungeon ?"

" ]STone," replied the individual addressed, not without some marks of impatience at my thus persisting. " \Vere you his brother you could do no more for him here than you have done. Your presence at Petersburg may, on the contrary, be useful to M. Pernet. You can inform the French ambassador all that you know about this imprisonment; for I doubt whether he will hear any thing of it from your consul. A representation made to the minister by a personage in the position of your ambassador, and by a man possessing the character of M. de Barante, will do more to hasten the deliverance of your countryman than you, and I, and any twenty others could do in Moscow."

" But the emperor and his ministers are at Borodino or at Moscow," I answered, unwilling to take a refusal.

" All the ministers have not followed his Majesty," he replied, still in a polite tone, but with increasing and scarcely-concealed ill-humour. '£ Besides, at the worst, their return must be waited. You have, I repeat, no other course to take, unless you would injure the man whom you wish to save, and expose yourself also to many unpleasant surmises, or perhaps to something worse," he added, in a significant manner.

Had the person to whom I addressed myself been a placeman, I should have already fancied I saw the cossacks advancing to seize and convey me to a dungeon like that of M. Pernet's.

I felt that the patience of my adviser was at an