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

152DEATH OF PAUL I.

involuntary impulse in the commission of evil, the more I feel consoled. Unfortunately, it was the calculation of interest and prudence, and not the impulses of anger, which presided over the murder of Paul. Good Russians pretend that the conspirators had only intended to plaee him in prison. I have seen the secret door opening into the garden, which led to the apartment of the emperor by a private staircase, up which Pahlen caused the assassins to ascend. His communication with them on the evening before was to this effect: — " You will either have killed the emperor by five o'clock to-morrow morning, or you will be denounced by me to the emperor, at half past five, as conspirators." The result of this eloquent and laconic harangue need not be questioned.

At five o'clock on the following morning, Alexander was an emperor, and also an imputed parricide, although he had only consented (tin's is true, I believe) to the confinement of his father, in order to save his mother from prison and perhaps death, to protect himself from a similar fate, and to preserve his eomitry from the rage and caprice of an insane autocrat.

At the present day, the Russians pass the old Michael Palace without daring to look at it. In the schools, and elsewhere, the death of the Emperor Paul is forbidden to be mentioned or even believed.

I am astonished that this palace of inconvenient recollections has not been pulled down. The traveller congratulates himself at the sight of a monument whose antique appearance is remarkable in a land where despotism renders every thing uniform and