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

140THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE

treasury all the chains of gold, the collars, the coa‡ly stuffs, and the silver vessels, which the Emperor and the Areh-duke Ferdinand had given him. Nevertheless, these men do not complain ; they say, ' The great prince takes away, the great prinee will give again.'" It was thus the Russians spoke of the czar in the sixteenth century.

At the present day you will hear, both in Paris and in Petersburg, numbers of Russians dwelling with rapture on the prodigious effects of the word of the emperor; and, in magnifying these results, not one troubles himself with dwelling upon the means. ·¢ The word of the emperor can create," they say. Yes; it can animate stones, by destroying human beings. .Notwithstanding this little restrictive clause, every Russian is proud of being able to say to us, " You take three years to deliberate on the means of rebuilding a theatre, whilst our emperor raises again, in one year, the largest palace in the universe." And this puerile triumph does not appear to them too dearly bought by the death of a few thousand wretched artisans, sacrificed to that sovereign impatience, that imperial fantasy, which constitutes the national glory. Whilst I, though a Frenchman, see nothing but inhuman ostentation in tins achievement, not a single protestation is raised from one end of this immense empire to the other, against the orgies of absolute power.

People and government are here in unison. That a man brought up in the idolatry of self, a man revered as omnipotent by sixty millions of men, or at least of beings that resemble men, should not undertake to put an end to such a state of things — this