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

embarked with numerous active and determined men, whom he kept for the purpose of aiding him in these nocturnal expeditions. He then gathered together the stranger mariners and, instead of affording them the expected succour, murdered them under cover of the dark; after which he pillaged their slúp, although actuated throughout much less by a desire of gain than by a pure love of evil, and a disinterested pleasure in destruction.

" Doubting all things, and disbelieving the principle of justice, he considered moral and social disorder as being most analogous to the state of man here below, and civil and political virtues as chimeras that only oppose nature without subduing it.

" He pretended that, in putting an end to the life of his fellow creatures, he was subservient to the schemes of Providence, who was pleased, he said, to extract life out of death.

" One evening, towards the end of autumn, when the nights were very long, he had exterminated the crew of a Dutch merchantman, and the pirates, whom he kept under the title of guards, among the servants belonging to his house, were for several hours occupied in landing the cargo of the wrecked vessel, without observing that, during the massacre, the captain had profited by the darkness, and had saved himself in a boat which had followed him with some of the sailors of his vessel.

" Day-break surprised the baron and his emissaries

at their work of darkness, and announced to them also

the approach of a small boat. They immediately

shut the gates of the secret vaults, where the produce

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