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

194THE RUSSIAN MIDDLE CLASS.

There is no citizen class in Russia, but the petty employes and the small, though ennobled, landed proprietors, represent there the middle orders of other lands. Envying the great, and themselves envied by the little, these men vainly call themselves nobles. They are exactly in the position of the French bourgeois before the revolution; the same data produce everywhere the same results.

I felt that there reigned in this society a hostility, ill disguised, against real greatness and true elegance, to whatever land they might belong.

That starehness of manners, that acrimony of sentiment, ill concealed under an air of preciseness and propriety, recalled to my mind only too well, the epoch in which we live, and which I had a little forgotten in Russia, where I had hitherto only seen the society of courtiers. I was now among aspiring subalterns, uneasy as to what might be thought of them, and these people are the same everywhere.

The men did not speak to me, and appeared to take little notice of me; they did not understand French, beyond perhaps being able to read it with difficulty; they therefore formed a circle in a corner of the room, and talked Russian. One or two females of the family bore all the weight of the French conversation. I was surprised to find that they were acquainted with all that portion of our literature that the Russian police suffers to penetrate into their land. The toilette of these ladies, who, with the exception of the mistress of the house, were all elderly, was wanting in taste; the dress of the men was yet more negligent; large brown topcoats, almost traiUng upon the ground, had taken the place