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

214COLUMN OF ALEXANDER.

tholic priest, which took place in one of the halls of the palace, consecrated to tliis pious use for the day only. After these two marriages, the bride and bridegroom and their family met at table. I, not having permission to witness either the Catholic marriage or the banquet, followed the greater number of the courtly crowd, and went out to breathe a less stifling air, congratulating myself on the little effect that my dilapidated boot had produced. Some persons, however, spoke to me of it laughingly, and that was all. Both in good and in evil, nothing that merely regards ourselves is as important as we fancy it.

On departing from the palace I found my carriage again without any trouble. There is never, I repeat, a large concourse in Russia. The space is always too vast for what is done there. This is the advantage of a country where there is no nation. In a community thus ordered, a crowd would be equivalent to a revolution.

The void which is every where observable, causes the public structures to appear too small for the places in which they stand; they seem lost in space. The column of Alexander passes for being higher than that of the Place Vendôme, owing to the dimensions of its pedestal. The shaft consists of one single block of granite, the largest that has ever been shaped by the hand of man. Tliis immense column, raised between the winter palace and the crescent, which forms the other extremity of the square, when viewed from the palace, appears to the eye as nothing more than a pole, and the houses around might be taken for palisades. In the square a hundred thousand men