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

160RUSSIAN PRISONERS.

In this funereal citadel, the dead appeared to me more free than the living. If it had been a philosophical idea which suggested the inclosing in the same tomb the prisoners of the emperor and the prisoners of death —the conspirators and the monarchs against whom they conspired — I should respect it; but I see in it nothing more than the cynicism of absolute power — the brutal security of a desjiotism which feels itself safe. Strong in its superhuman power, it rises above the little humane delicacies, the observance of which is advisable in common governments. A Russian emperor is so full of what is due to himself, that he cannot afford to have his justice lost sight of in that of God's. We royalist revolutionaries of Western Europe see only in a prisoner of state at Petersburg an innocent victim of despotism; the Russians view him as a reprobate. Every sound appeared to me a complaint; the stones groaned beneath my feet. Oh, how I pity the prisoners of this fortress ! If the existence of the Russians confined under the earth, is to be judged of by inferences drawn from the existence of the Russians who live above, thei`e is, indeed, eause to shudder ! A thrill of horror passed through me as I thought that the most stedfast fidelity, the most scrupulous probity, could secure no man from the subterranean prisons of the citadel of Petersburg, and my heart dilated, and my respiration came more freely, as I repassed the moats which defend this gloomy abode, and separate it from the rest of the world.

Who would not pity this people ? The Russians, I speak now of the higher classes, are living under the influences of an ignorance and of prejudices which