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

CHARACTER OF THE EMPEROR. 191

I have just returned from the palaee, after having witnessed, in the Imperial chapel, all the Greek ceremonies of the marriage of the Grand Duchess Marie with the Duke de Leuchtenberg.

I will endeavour to describe in detail, but in the first place I must speak of the Emperor.

The predominant expression of his countenance is that of a restless severity, which strikes a beholder at the first glance; and, in spite of the regularity of his features, conveys by no means a pleasant impression. Physiognomists pretend, with much reason, that the hardness of the heart injures the beauty of the countenance. Nevertheless, this expression in the Emperor Nicholas appears to be the result of experience rather than the work of nature. By what long and cruel sufferings must not a man have been tortured, when his countenance excites fear, notwithstanding the voluntary confidence that noble features inspire.

A man charged with the management and direction, in its most minute details, of some immense machine, incessantly fears the derangement of one or other of its various parts. He who obeys suffers only according to the precise measure of the evil inflicted : he who commands, suffers first as other men suffer, and afterwards that common measure of evil is multiplied a hundred fold for him by the workings of imagination and self-love. Responsibility is the punishment of absolute power.

If he be the primum mobile of all minds, he becomes the centre also of all griefs: the more he is dreaded the more he is to be pitied.

He to whom is accorded unlimited rule sees, even in