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

by Astolphe De Custine

  THE HISTORY OP THELENEF.129

  seen that they are brothers, — a circumstance which renders the carnage more horrible.

  But then, these are no longer the children of nature; they are men perverted by a cruel and unfeeling social system. The natural man exists only in books ; where he forms a theme for philosophic declamation, an ideal type, from which moralists draw their deductions just as mathematicians, in certain calculations, proceed upon given cµiantities. Nature, for the primitive man, as for the degenerated man, is still a state of society; and, whatever may be said, the most civilised society is the best.

  The fatal circle opened for a moment, to allow of the entrance of Fedor and his execrable escort. Thelenef was so placed as not, at first, to perceive his youthful liberator. His execution was about to begin, when a murmur of terror spread among the crowd.

  " A spectre ! a spectre ! It is she !" was the cry heard on all sides. The ring broke and dispersed, — the executioners fled before a phantom! Cruelty readily unites with superstition.

  The flight was, however, arrested by several of the more determined ruffians, who shouted that it was Xenie herself, living, and in their power.

  " Stay ! stay !" cried a female voice, the agonizing accents of which went to all hearts, but above all to the heart of Fedor. " Let me pass, I will see them ' They are my father and my brother ! You will not forbid me to die with them ? " Ere she had concluded these words, Xenie had reached the spot where Fedor stood incapable of motion, and fell insensible at his feet.

  We here feel the necessity of abridging the de-g 5

  130THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.

  scription of this horrible scene. It was long, but we will describe it in few words. We must, however, first ask pardon for what we do relate.

  Xenie, in the cabin where we left her, had forced herself to maintain silence, for fear of increasing the danger of Fedor; but, as soon as the two women were alone, she escaped, and hastened to share the fate of her father.

  The execution of Thclenef commenced. Just heavens! what a death! To render it the more terrible to this unhappy being, they placed Xenie and Fedor before his eyes, seated and bound on a rude species of platform raised in haste at a short distance from him; they then cut off one by one, his feet and hands ; and when at length the mutilated trunk was almost drained of blood, they stifled his death cry by stuffing into his mouth one of his own feet.

  The women of the faubourg of Caen eating the heart of M. de Belzunce on the bridge of Vauxelles were models of humanity compared with the tranquil spectators of the death of Thelenef.

  And this took place but a few months ago, and within a few days' journey of one of the most admired cities of Europe! After the father had ceased to suffer, one of the executioners advanced to seize the daughter; but he found her stiff and cold. During the torture of her father she had not made a single movement nor uttered a single word.

  Fedor, at this sight, recovered, as though by some supernatural influence working within him, all his energy and presence of mind. By a miraculous exertion of strength he broke the cords that bound him, burst from the hands of his keepers, rushed towards

  THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.131

  his beloved sister, raised her from the earth, and pressed her for a long time to his heart; then replacing her gently and respectfully on the grass, he addressed his tormentors with that calm, composed air that appears natural to the Orientals, even in the most tragical moments of life.

  " You must not touch her. God has laid his hand upon her: she is mad."

  " Mad !" responded the superstitious crowd: " God is with her!"

  " It is he, it is the traitor, her lover, who has told her to counterfeit madness ! No, no! we must make a finish with all the enemies of God and of men," cried the most ferocious of the savages ; " besides, our oath binds us: let us do our duty! Our father (the Emperor) has willed it, and he will recompense us."

  " Approach her, then, if you dare ! " once more cried Fedor, in the delirium of despair ; " she has suffered me to press her in my arms without resistance; you see she must be mad. But she speaks! Listen ! "

  They approached, and heard these words : £í It was I, then, whom he loved!"

  Fedor, who alone understood the meaning of this sentence, fell on his knees, and thanking God, burst into tears.

  The executioners drew back from Xenie with involuntary respect. " She is mad !" they repeated to

  each other, in an under tone.

  *****

  Since that day she has never passed an hour without repeating the same words —" It was I, then, whom he loved!"

  Many, in seeing her so calm, would question her g 6

  132THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.

  insanity. It is supposed that the love of Fedor, thus accidentally revealed, awoke in the heart of his foster-sister, the innocent, though passionate tenderness, which the unhappy girl had, unknown either to herself or her lover, so long felt for him; and that the suddenness of the untimely discovery broke her heart,

  No exhortation or advice has hitherto been able to prevent her repeating these words, which proceed from her lips mechanically, and with an incessant volubility which is frightful.

  Her mind, her whole existence, has stopped, and gathered itself around the involuntary avowal of the love of Fedor, and the organs of intelligence continue their functions, as it were, by the operation of a spring, obeying that remainder of the will which bids them for ever repeat the mysterious and sacred words which suffice for her mental life.

  If Fedor did not perish after Thelenef, it was not to the weariness of the executioners that he owed his safety, but to that of the spectators; for the passive party tires of crime more quickly than he who is actively engaged in its perpetration. The crowd, satiated with blood, desired that the execution of the young man should be deferred until the following night. In the interval, considerable forces arrived from several sides. On the morrow, the canton in which the revolt had sprung up was surrounded, the villages were decimated, the most culpable — condemned, not to death, but to a hundred and twenty strokes of the knout — miserably perished. The remainder were banished to Siberia. Nevertheless, the populations in the neighbourhood of Vologda are not yet restored to quiet and order ; each day witnesses the departure

  THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.133

  of hundreds of peasants, exiled in a mass to Siberia. The lords of these deserted villages are ruined ; for in estates of this kind, it is the men who constitute the wealth of the proprietor. The rich domains of the

  Prince have become a dreary solitude. Fedor,

  with his mother and his wife, have been compelled to follow the inhabitants of their desolate village.

  Xenie was present at the departure of the exiles, but she did not say adieu, for this new misfortune had not restored to her the light of reason.

  At the moment of departing, an unexpected event cruelly aggravated the grief of Fedor and his family. His wife and mother were already in the cart, and he was about to follow them, to quit Vologda for ever ; but he saw only Xenie, he suffered only for his sister, an orphan, deprived of reason, or at least of memory, and whom he was going to abandon among the still warm ashes of their native hamlet. Now that she had need of the kindest aid, strangers were going to be her only protectors. The bitter feeling of despair which this thought produced, stopped his tears. A piercing cry, proceeding from the cart, recalled him to the side of his wife, whom he foimd fainting ; — one of the soldiers was taking away his child.

  " What are уогг going to do?" cried the distracted father.

  " To place it there by the way-side that they may bury it; do you not see that it is dead ?" replied the Cossack.

  " I will carry it myself!"

  " You shall not touch it."

  At this moment, other soldiers attracted by the noise, seized Fedor, who, yielding to irresistible force,

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  could only weep and supplicate. " He is not dead, he has f
ainted; let me embrace him. I promise you," he said, convulsively sobbing, "to give him up to you if his heart no longer beats. You, perhaps, have a son; have pity on me, then," said the unfortunate man, overcome with grief. The Cossack was moved ; he restored to him his child. Scarcely had the father touched the icy body, than his hair stood upon his forehead,—he cast his eyes around him, they encountered the inspired look of Xenie. Neither misfortune, nor injustice, nor death, nor insanity,—nothing upon earth could destroy the sympathy of these two hearts, born to understand each other.

  The young man made a sign to Xenie; the soldiers respected the poor maniac, who advanced, and received the body of the babe from the hands of its father, but without a word being uttered. The daughter of Thelenef, still without speaking, next took off her veil and gave it to Fedor; she then pressed the little corpse in her arms, and, charged with her sacred burden, remained in the same place, immovable, until she had seen her beloved brother, supported between a weeping mother and a dying wife, leave for ever the village which had given him birth. She long followed with her eye the convoy of the exiled peasants: at length, when the last cart had disappeared on the road to Siberia, and she was left alone, she took away the infant, and began to play with the cold remains, bestowing upon them the most tender and endearing caresses.

  " He is not dead, then!" said the lookers on, "*he will revive; she will restore him !"

  Power of love! who can assign thy limits ? * * * *

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  The mother of Fedor reproached herself without ceasing, for not having detained Xenie in the cottage of the old man ; " at least she would not then have been forced to witness the punishment of her father," said the good Elizabeth.

  " You would have preserved her reason, only to have increased her sufferings," replied Fedor; and again there was a dead silence.

  The poor old woman had for a time been very resigned. Neither the massacres nor the fire had extorted from her a single complaint; but when it was necessary to submit with the other Vologdians to the pain of exile — to quit the cabin where her son was born, where the father of her son had died, when she was obliged to abandon her brother in helpless dotage, courage forsook her, her fortitude suddenly failed, she clung to the planks of her cottage, and at length had to be torn away, and placed by force in the téléga, where Ave have seen her weeping for the new-born infant of her beloved son.

  It will perhaps scarcely be believed that the tender cares, the vivifying breath, or perhaps the prayers of Xenie, restored at length the life of the child whom Fedor had believed to be dead. This miracle of tenderness, or of piety, causes her to be venerated as a saint by the strangers sent from the North to re-people the deserted ruins of Vologda.

  Those men who believe her mad would not dare to take from her the child of her brother: no one thinks of disputing with her this precious prey, rescued thus wonderfully from the jaws of death. Such a miracle of love will console even the exiled father, whose heart will again feel a thrill of pleasure, when he

  136ТПЕ HISTORY OF THELENEF.

  knows that liis son has been saved, and saved by Xenie !

  A goat follows her to nourish the infant. The virgin mother may sometimes be seen, a living picture, seated in the sun among the dark ruins of the eastle in which she was born, and smiling fondly on the child of her soul, the son of the hapless exile.

  She cradles the little one upon her knees with a virgin graee, and his awaking brings a smile of angelic delight upon her eountenanee. Without knowing or hating the world, she has passed from eharity to love, from love to madness, from madness to maternity. God watches over her!

  Sometimes she appears struck with some sweet and sad remembrance : then her lips, the senseless echoes of the past, murmur mechanically these mysterious words — the last and only expression of her intellectual life, and of which not one of the inhabitants of Vologda can divine the meaning, — " It is I, then, whom he loved ! "

  Neither the Russian poet nor myself have shrunk from the expression of virgin mother as applied to Xenie, and neither of us think that we have been wanting in respect for the sublime verse of the Catholic poet —

  " О Vergine Madre, figlio del tuo figlio," *

  or profaned the profound mystery that is indicated in those few words.

  * II Paradiso of Dante, cant. 33. i. v.

  ANXIETY TO REACH MOSCOW.137

  CHAP. XIX.

  PKTERSBURC IN THE ABSENCE OF THE EMPEROR.—CHARACTER OF

  THE COURTIERS.THE TCHINN.ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN. —

  DESTRUCTION OF THE ARISTOCRACY. CHARACTER OF PETER

  THE GREAT.— THE TCHINN DIVIDED INTO FOURTEEN CLASSES.

  AN IMMENSE POWER IN THE HANDS OF THE EMPEROR. OP

  POSITE OPINIONS ON THE FUTURE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA.

  RUSSIAN HOSPITALITY.—POLITE FORMALITIES. RESEMBLANCE

  TO THE CHINESE. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE RUSSIANS AND

  THE FRENCH.RUSSIAN HONESTY. — OPINION OF NAPOLEON. —

  THE ONLY SINCERE MAN IN THE EMPIRE.SPOILED SAVAGES.

  ERRORS OF PETER THE GREAT. ABSURD ARCHITECTURE.

  BEAUTY OF THE QUAYSTHE GREAT SQUARETHE CHURCHES.

  PALACE OF THE TAURIDA. ANTIQUE VENUS.THE HERMI

  TAGE. PICTURE GALLERY.PRIVATE SOCIAL CODE OF THE

  EMPRESS CATHERINE.

  I had promised my friends not to return to France without seeing Moscow, the fabulous city — fabulous in spite of history; for the grandeur of the events connected with it, though they recall the most positive and clearly-defined occurrences of our age, renders its name poetical beyond all other names.

  This scene of an epic poem has a sublimity which contrasts, in a whimsical manner, with the spirit of an age of mathematicians and# stock-jobbers. I am therefore especially impatient to reach Moscow^ for which city I set out in two days. My impatience will not, however, prevent my expatiating on all that may strike me before arriving there, for I mean to

  138 PETERSBURG IN THE EMPEROR'S ABSENCE.

  complete, as far as I am able, the picture of this vast and singular empire.

  It is impossible to describe the dulness of St. Petersburg during the absence of the emperor. At no time does the city exhibit what may be called gaiety; but without the court, it is a desert. The reader is aware that it is constantly menaced with destruction by the sea. This morning, while traversing its solitary quays and empty streets, I said to myself, " Surely the city must be about to be inundated; the inhabitants have fled, and the water will soon recover possession of the marsh." Nothing of the kind : Petersburg is lifeless only because the Emperor is at Peterhoíf. The water of the Neva, driven back by the sea, rises so high, and the banks are so low, that this large inlet, with its innumerable arms, resembles a stagnant inundation, an overflowing marsh. They call the Neva a river, but it is for want of a more precise signification. At Petersburg the Neva has already become the sea; higher up, it is a channel of a few leagues in length, which serves to convey the superfluous waters of Lake Ladoga into the Gulf of Finland.

  At the period when the quays of Petersburg were built, a taste for structures of small elevation prevailed among the Russians. The adoption of this taste was very injudicious in a country where the snow, during eight months in the year, diminishes the height of the Avails by six feet; and where the surface of the soil presents no variety that might, in any degree, relieve the monotony of the regular circle which forms the unchangeable line of horizon, serving as a frame for scenes level as the ocean. In

  APPEARANCE OF THE CITY.139

  my youth, I inhaled enthusiasm at the feet of the mountainous coasts of Calabria, before landscapes all of whose lines, excepting those of the sea, were vertical. Here, on the contrary, I see only one plane surface terminated by a perfectly horizontal line drawn betwixt the sky and the water. The mansions, palaces, and colleges which line the Neva, seem scarcely to rise above the soil, or rather the sea : some have only one story, the loftiest not more than three, and all a
ppear dilapidated. The masts of the vessel overshoot the roofs of the houses. These roofs are of painted iron; they are light and elegant, but very flat, like those of Italy, whereas pointed roofs are alone proper in countries where snow abounds. In Russia, we are shocked at every step by the results of imitation without reflection.

  Between the square blocks of an architecture which pretends to be Italian, run wide, straight, and empty vistas, which they call streets, and which, notwithstanding their projecting colonnades, are anything but classical. The scarcity of the women contributes to the dulness of the city. Those who are pretty, seldom appear on foot. Wealthy persons who wish to walk, are invariably followed by a servant. The practice is, here, one of prudence and necessity.

  The Emperor alone has the power to people this wearisome abode, abandoned so soon as its master has disappeared. He is the magician who puts thought and motion into the human machines, — a magician in whose presence Russia wakes, and in whose absence she sleeps. After the Court has left, the superb metropolis has ,the appearance of a theatre when the