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

218THE PRINCE TROUBETZKOI.

proceed to the punishment of the culpable. The Prince Troubetzkoi, one of the most deeply implicated, unable to exculpate himself, was sentenced to labour in the Uralian mines for fourteen or fifteen years, and for the remainder of his life was exiled to Siberia, among one of those distant colonies that malefactors are destined to people.

The prince had a wife whose family was among the most distinguished in the land. This princess could not be dissuaded from following her husband to his tomb. " It is my duty," she said, " and I will fulfil it; no human power has a right to separate a wife from her husband; I will share the fate of mine."

This noble wife obtained the favour of being buried alive with her unhappy partner. I am astonished, since I have seen Russia and the spirit of its government, that, influenced by a lingering relic of shame, they have thought it right to respect this act of devotion during a period of fourteen years. That they should favour patriotic heroism is very natural, for they profit by it; but to tolerate a sublime virtue that does not accord with the views of the sovereign was an act of remissness for which they must have often reproached themselves. They feared the friends of Troubetzkoi; an aristocracy, however enervated it may be, always preserves a shadow of its independence,— a shadow that serves to cast a cloud over despotism. Contrasts abound in this dreadful society; many men speak among themselves as freely as if they lived in France: this secret liberty consoles them for the publie slavery which forms the shame and the eurse of their land.