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

MORALS OF TIIE CITIZENS' WIVES.89

According to them, the citizens' wives in Moscow are no better than the women of rank.

During the months that their husbands go to the fair of Nijni, the officers of the garrison take special care not to leave the city. This is the seasou of easy assignations. The ladies are generally accompanied to the place of rendezvous by some ?`espectable relation, to whose care their absent husbands have confided them. The good-will and silence of these family duennas have also to be paid for. Gallantry of this kind cannot be excused as a love affair : there is no love without bashful modesty, — such is the sentence pronounced from all eternity against women who cheat themselves of happiness, and who degrade instead of purifying themselves by tenderness. The defenders of the Russians pretend that at Moscow the women have no lovers: I agree with them : some other term must be employed to designate the friends whose intimacy they seek in the absence of their husbands.

I repeat that I am disposed to doubt many things of this kind that are told to me ; but I cannot doubt that they are related pleasantly and complacently to the first newly-arrived foreigner; and the air of triumph of the narrator seems to say—wc also, you see, are civilised !

The more I consider these debauchees' manner of life, the more I wonder at the social position— to use the language of the day—which they here preserve, notwithstanding conduct that in any other land would shut all doors against them. I cannot tell how such notorious offenders are treated in their own families ; but I can testify that, in public, every one pays them