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

IRRESOLUTION INDUCED BY ILLNESS.67

find myself, not among the deserts of the earth, but travelling on the superb steam-boat Nicholas the First, and in the midst of as refined a society as I have met with for a long time.

He who could embody in the style of Boccaccio the conversations in which I have taken a very modest part during the last three days, might make a book as brilliant and amusing as the Decameron, and almost as profound as La Bruyère.

I had been long an invalid. At Travemunde I was so ill that, on the very day for sailing, I thought of renouncing the journey. My carriage had been placed on board, but I felt the cold fit of fever thrilling through my veins, and I feared to increase the sickness that already tormented me, by the sea-sickness that I knew I could not escape. What should I do at Petersburg, eight hundred leagues from home, were I to fall seriously ill. To embark with a fever on a long journey — is it not an act of insanity ? Such were my thoughts. But, then again, would it not seem yet more absurd to change my mind at the last moment, and have my carriage brought back on shore ? What would the people of Travemunde say ? How could my irresolution be explained to my friends at Paris?

I am not accustomed to be governed 'by reasonings of this character, but I was sick and reduced in strength : the shiverings also increased; an inexpressible languor, an utter distaste for food, and severe pains in the head and side, made me dread a passage of four days. I shall not survive it, said I to myself; yet to change a project is as difficult for invalids as for other men.