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

64A RUSSIAN COFFEE-HOUSE,

thing is excessive. To describe the ravages of society in a population like that of Moscow would be difficult: nowhere have the mental maladies engendered in the soul by ennui — that passion of men who have no passions — appeared to me so serious or so frequent as among the higher classes in Russia: it may be said that society has here commenced by its abuses. AVhen vice does not suffice to enable the human heart to shake off the ennui that preys upon it, that heart proceeds to crime.

The interior of a Russian coffee-house is very curious. It consists generally of a large, low apartment, badly lighted, and usually occupying the first floor of the house. The waiters are dressed in white shirts, girded round the middle, and falling like a tunic over loose white pantaloons. Their hair is long and smooth, like that of all the lower orders of Russians; and their whole adjustment reminds one of the theophilanthropes of the French republic, or the priests of the Opera when paganism was the fashion at the theatre. They serve you with excellent tea, superior, indeed, to any found in other lands, with coffee and liqueurs; but this is done with a silence and solemnity very different from the noisy gaiety which reigns in the cafes of Paris. In Russia, all popular pleasures are melancholy in their character: mirth is viewed as a privilege; consequently, I always find it assumed, affected, overdone, and worse than the natural sadness. Here, the man who laughs is either an actor, a drunkard, or a flatterer.

This reminds me of the times when the Russian serfs believed, in the simplicity of their abjectness, that heaven was only made for their masters: dread-