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

FORTRESS ОГ SCHLUSSELBURG. 189

labours. The fortress of Schlussellmrg is not picturesque: it is a girdle of Swedish walls of small elevation, and the interior of which forms a kind of orchard, wherein are dispersed several very low buildings; including a church, a house for the commandant, a barracks, and the dungeons, masked by windows the height of which does not exceed that of the rampart. Nothing announces violence or mystery. The appearance of this quiet state prison is more terrible to the imagination than to the eye. Gratings, drawbridges, battlements, and all the somewhat theatrical apparatus of the castles of the middle aces, are not here to be seen. The o;ovemor com-menced by showing me the superb monuments of the church ! The four copes which were solemnly displayed before me cost, as the governor himself took the trouble to say, thirty thousand roubles. Tired of such sights, I simply asked for the tomb of Ivan VI. They replied by showing me a breach made in the л\га11 by the cannon of the Czar Peter, when he conducted in person the siege of the key of the Baltic.

" The tomb of Ivan," I continued, without suffering myself to be disconcerted, "where is it?" This time they conducted me behind the church, and, pointing near to a rose bi·ier, said, " It is here."

I conclude that victims are allowed no tomb in Russia.

¢í And the chamber of Ivan," I continued with a pertinacity which must have appeared as singular to my guides, as their scruples, reserve, and tergiversations appeared to me.

The engineer answered in a low voice that they could not show the chamber of Ivan, because it lay