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

MEANS EMPLOYED FOR ITS ERECTION. 137

most highly heated halls were obliged to place on their heads a kind of bonnet of ice, in order to preserve the use of their senses under the burning temperature. Had there been a design to disgust the world with arts, elegance, luxury, and all the pomp of courts, could a more efficacious mode have been taken ? And yet the sovereign was called father, by the men immolated before his eyes in prosecuting an object of pure imperial vanity. They were neither spies nor Russian cynics who gave me these details, the authenticity of which I guarantee.

The millions expended on Versailles supported as many families of French workmen as there were Slavonian serfs destroyed by these twelve months in the winter palace; but, by means of this sacrifice, the mandate of the emperor has realised a prodigy ; and the palace, completed to the general satisfaction, is going to be inaugurated by marriage fetes. A prince may be popular in Russia without attaching much value to human life. Nothing colossal is produced without effort; but when a man is in himself both the nation and the government, he ought to impose on himself a law, not to press the great springs of the machine he has the power of moving, except for some object worthy of the effort. To work miracles at the cost of the life of an army of slaves may be great; but it is too great, for both God and man will finally rise to wreak vengeance on these inhuman prodigies. Men have adored the light, the Russians worship the eclipse : when will their eyes be opened ?

I do not say that their political system produces nothing good; I simply say that what it does produce is dearly bought.