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

vict, and -we shall soon see to what this condition condemns a man — and his children!

There is no lack of good Russians in Petersburg, and I have met some, who view the life of the convicts at the mines as very bearable, and who complain of the exaggeration with which the modern makers of fine speeches describe the sufferings of the traitors in the Uralian mountains. They own that they are not allowed to receive any money, but their relations are suffered to send them provisions. Provisions! there are few that could be forwarded so great a distance, without being rendered unfit for use. But the courtiers of the executioner always find the punishment too merciful for the crime.

However great may be the luxuries of life in Siberia, the health of the Princess Troubetzkoi is injured by her sojourn at the mines. It is difficult to understand how a woman accustomed to all the delicacies of life in the highest ranks of a luxurious capital, has been able to support so long the privations of every kind to which she has voluntarily submitted. She wished to live, she did live — she even gave life; she reared her offspring under a zone where the length and the rigour of winter seem to us inimical to existence. The thermometer falls there, yearly, to a temperature that might alone suffice to destroy the human race. But this saint-like woman had other cares to think of.

At the conclusion of seven years of exile, as she saw her infants growing around her, she thought it her duty to write to one of her family to beg that they would humbly supplicate the Emperor to suffer them to be sent to Petersburg, or to some other l 3