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

20PICK-POCKETS IN THE PALACE.

less; every man must be viewed as a rival because it is possible that he may become one."

I have no greater belief in the probity of the mugic. They tell me that he would not conceal a flower in the garden of his emperor; that I do not dispute. I know that fear will produce miracles, but I know also that this model people, these peasant courtiers do not scruple to rob their lordly rivals on a day, when too much affected by their presence at the palace, and too confident in the honourable sentiments of the serf ennobled for the hour, they cease for one moment to watch the movements of the said serf's hands.

Yesterday, at the imperial and popular ball of the palace of Peterhoff, the Sardinian ambassador had his watch very adroitly extracted notwithstanding the chain which formed its guard. Several people lost also their handkerchiefs and other articles in the press. I myself lost a purse lined with a few ducats, and consoled myself for the loss in laughing at the eulogies lavished on the probity of this people by its lords, The latter well know the real value of all their fine phrases, and I am not sorry to know it also. In observing their futile finesses, I seek for the dupes of falsehoods so puerile, and I cry, with Basil, " Who is deceiving here ? All the world is in the secret."

In vain do the Russians talk and pretend ; every honest observer can only see in them the Greeks of the Lower Empire formed in accordance with the rules of modern strategy by the Prussians of the eighteenth and the French of the nineteenth century.

The popularity of an autocrat appears to me as