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

CHICKEN FKICASEES.249

which to his great astonishment he found excellent. Immediately the fricassee of Torjeck became celebrated throughout Russia.* The following is their origin. An unfortunate Frenchman had been well received and treated in this town by a female innkeeper. Before leaving he said to her, " I cannot pay you, but I will make your fortune," whereupon he showed her how to fricasee chickens. As good luck would have it, this precious recipe was, at least so it is said, first prepared for the Emperor. The innkeeper of Torjeck is dead; but her children have inherited her renown, and they maintain it.

Torjeck, when that town first breaks upon the view of the traveller, conveys the idea of a camp in the midst of an immense corn field. Its white houses, its towers and pavilion-shaped domes, remind him of the mosques and minarets of the East. Gilded turrets, round and square steeples, some ornamented with little columns, and all painted green or blue, announce the vicinity of Moscow. The land around is well cultivated. It is a plain covered with rye, which plain, though devoid of all other objects, [ greatly prefer to the sickly woods that have wearied my eyes for the last two days. The tilled earth is at any rate fertile, and the richness of a country will lead us to forgive its want of picturesque beauty ; but a tract that is sterile, and yet possesses none of the majesty of the wilderness, is of all others the most tedious to travel over.

* There is nothing which an Emperor of Russia could not bring into fashion in his country. At Milan, if the viceroy patronises an actor or singer, the reputation of the artist is at once lost, and he is hissed unmercifully. M 5