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

2FETE OF PETERHOFF.

of courtiers and peasants, who mingle together in the same saloons without any interchange of real sympathy. In a social point of view the sight has displeased me, because it seems to me that the emperor, by this false display of popularity, abases the great without exalting the humble. All men are ecµial before God, and the Russians' God is the emperor. This supreme governor is so raised above earth, that he sees no difference between the serf and the lord. From the height, in which his sublimity dwells, the little distinctions which divide mankind escape his divine inspection, just as the irregularities which appear on the surface of the globe vanish before an inhabitant of the sun.

When the emperor opens his palace to the privileged peasants and the chosen burghers whom he admits twice a year to the honour of paying their court *, he does not say to the labourer or the tradesman, "You are a man like myself," but he says to the great lord, " You are a slave like them, and I, your God, soar equally above you all." Such is (all ])olitical fiction aside) the moral meaning of the fete : it is this which, in my opinion, spoils it. As a spectator, I remarked that it pleased the sovereign and the serfs, much more than the professed courtiers.

To seek to become a popular idol by reducing all others to a level, is a cruel game, an amusement of despotism, which might dazzle the men of an earlier century, but which cannot deceive any people arrived at the age of experience and reflection.

* On the 1st of January, at Petersburg, and at Peterhoíf, nn the birthday of the, Empress.