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

CULPABILITY OF ТПЕ ARISTOCRACY. 185

the clandestine amours that certain malevolent persons have ascribed to the reigning emperor. The amusements of this prince are viewed only as relaxations from the cares of greatness. This once known, and with whatever consequences they may be attended to certain families, one must profess ignorance of them under pain of being accused of the greatest of all crimes in the eyes of a people composed of slaves and diplomatists—the crime of indiscretion. I am impatient to see the Empress. She is said to be a charmino`, though at the same time a frivolous

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and haughty personage. It needs both hauteur and levity to support an existence like that of hers. She neither interferes with nor informs herself respecting any publie affairs : knowledge is worse than useless, where there is no power to act upon it. The Empress does as the other subjects of the Emperor: all who are born Russians, or would live in Russia, must make silence upon public affairs the motto of their life. Secret conversations would be very interesting, but who dares indulge in them ? To reflect, and to discern would be to render one's self suspected.

M. de Repnin governed the empire and the Emperor : he has been out of favour for two years, and for two years Russia has not heard his name pronounced, though that name was previously in every body's mouth. In one day he fell from the pinnacle of power into the lowest depth of obscurity. No one dared to remember that he was living, nor even to believe that he ever had lived. In Russia, on the day that a minister falls from favour, his friends become deaf and blind. A man is as it were buried