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

RUSSIAN MYSTERY.59

the fete of Peterhoff, nor to hurry their departure, should their curiosity incline them to prolong their stay, intimating that she would wait patiently for them at Carlsbad. A little more urgency on her part would perhaps have saved their lives.

What numberless accounts, discussions, and proposals would not such a catastrophe have given rise to in any other land except this, and more especially in our own ! How many newspapers would have said, and how many voices would have repeated, that the police never does its duty, that the boats were not seaworthy, the watermen greedy only of gain, and that the authorities, far from interfering, did but increase the danger by their indifference or their corruption! It would have been added that the marriage of the grand-duchess had been celebrated under very gloomy auspices, like many other royal marriages ; and then, dates, allusions, and citations would have followed in great abundance. Nothing of the kind here ! A silence more frightful than the evil itself, everywhere reigns. Two lines in the Gazette, without details, is all the information publicly given ; and at court, in the city, in the saloons of fashion, not a word is spoken. There are no coffee-houses in Petersburg where people comment upon the journals ; there are indeed no journals upon which to comment. The petty employes are more timid than the great lords; what is not dared to be spoken of among the principals, is yet more carefully avoided by subordinates; and as to the merchants and shopkeepers, that wily caution necessary to all who would live and thrive in the land is, by them, especially observed. If.they speak on D 6