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

MARRIAGE OP PETER THE GREAT. 105

I wiH relate to you a story of a higher order than the one you have just heard: it is to you alone that I relate it, because before Russians one must not talk of history.

" You know that Peter the Great, after much hesitation, destroyed the patriarchate of Moscow, in order to unite on the same head the crown and the tiara. The political autocracy thus openly usurped that unlimited spiritual power which it had coveted for so long —monstrous union, unknown before among the nations of modern Europe. The chimera entertained by the popes during the middle-ages is now actually realised in a nation of sixty millions of people, many of them Asiatics, whom nothing surprises, and who are by no means sorry to find a grand Lama in their Czar.

" The Emperor Peter sought to unite himself in marriage with Catherine, the sutler.

" To accomplish this supreme object of his heart it was necessary to begin by finding a family name for the future empress. This was obtained I believe in Lithuania, where an obscure private gentleman was first converted into a great lord by birth, and afterwards discovered to be the brother of the empress elect.

" Russian despotism not only pays little respect to ideas and sentiments, it will also deny facts; it will ■struggle against evidence, and triumph in the struggle !!! for evidence, when it is inconvenient to power. has no more voice among us than has justice."

The bold language of the prince startled me. He had been educated at Rome, and, like all who possess any piety of feeling, and independence of mind, in г 5