On account of the great novelty and variety of the spectacle, I found the trip delightful on leaving Novgorod. The time passed more rapidly than the banks of the river, over whose congealed surface our horses continued fleeing at a mad pace as if pursued by a phantom.
This imposing Volga is of a character truly quite exceptional. France, certainly, has no river worthy of so much admiration for its grandeur. During the summer it is enlivened with an incessant movement of steamers, and is of immense importance as a waterway; and during winter also it continues rendering great services to humanity, affording the means for the transport of the grain that it has fertilized with its beneficent waters. Nothing is grander than this glacial route of unusual width, and of a uniformity and smoothness which no road laid by the hand of man can approach; without a pebble or a rut, one glides over without a jolt. Nothing interests the traveller more, the first time, than to watch the shores passing before the eye like a panorama; to contemplate the mountains and valleys the frozen way spares him the trouble of traversing; to coast the islands without navigating; and to pass here and there some barque, or perhaps steamer, imprisoned in the ice.
In about three hours and a half after leaving Novgorod, we reached our first stage, it being then quite dark.
In all these posting stages, there is a room for the travellers; and this room, though heated at the proprietor’s expense, becomes really a free home for the wanderer: he may eat, drink, and sleep there; do, in fact, whatever he likes; and what is still more singular, lodge there as long as he wishes, no one having a right to dislodge him.
Although this privilege is secured by contracts made between the posting masters and the Imperial administration, it would undoubtedly be quite consistent with the Russian character to accord it if it were not compulsory, the people being essentially hospitable.
This amiable quality results, perhaps, from the rigour of the climate; but I am rather disposed to believe—so general and spontaneous is it—that it is the consequence of a happy and generous disposition.
I shall have something more to say, by-and-by, on the merits of the Russian peasantry. I do not say that they have a monopoly of this benevolent spirit, for, indeed, it is common to all classes. The society of St. Petersburg cannot, certainly, be suspected to be wanting in kindness towards strangers; even the old Muscovite noble, notwithstanding his haughtiness, notwithstanding his hatred of new social institutions, notwithstanding his regret to see Moscow no longer the residence of the emperors, and, moreover, his antipathy for European ideas and fashions, adopted in the new capital;—in spite of all that, the Muscovite lord has retained profoundly rooted in his nature the old traditions of respect towards him who is his guest, and he regards hospitality, not simply as a passive virtue, but seriously as an active duty.
At the Siberian posting stages, the stranger often finds pleasant company or something to amuse him in the travellers’ room; it is rare to find it unoccupied; and when people are disposed to talk, subjects of conversation are not wanting. Those who are going in a contrary direction begin inquiring about everything that interests them on the way; about the state of the route; about the difficulties, more or less serious, that have been encountered in getting horses. Those who are taking the same way have generally already met at one or more stages, and now salute one another as old acquaintances. When the stage happens to be in a village, the principal persons of the neighbourhood generally come to pass away an hour or two very sociably with the travellers. They are very curious to know all about political matters from those who come from the West, and business affairs from those coming from the East. They all chat together in a manner perfectly free and easy, without the least exclusiveness on account of class, profession, or position. Their intercourse is always marked with the utmost good-nature and affability.
But at the stages that link Nijni to Kazan this kind of society is not always so agreeable.
The travellers around here are, in fact, a little too much civilized to be always quite so simple and warm-hearted. They are, perhaps, a little too well initiated in the new social principles of égalité and fraternité to believe that these amiable sentiments have so profoundly modified human nature as they find it in their surroundings. They look on the people accident throws in their way rather as competitors for accommodation, whose presence there may contribute to retard their journey, and would, if they had the liberté, such as their brethren and equals understand it (from the purely practical side of the formula), much rather smash their brethren’s sledges, than give them a helping hand under difficulties.
I did not linger very long in these first stages, where, on account of the privileged recommendations I was favoured with for obtaining horses, I met only with unfriendly looks and gestures; therefore, in twelve hours from my departure, I had already accomplished more than a quarter of the distance that separated me from Kazan.
We continued travelling over the Volga. A little before daybreak I was surprised at the strange noise that was being produced by the horses’ feet over the ice: it was no longer the dull, hollow sound that had terrified me at Nijni-Novgorod. It was to me one quite novel, and people generally, especially the most experienced,—a circumstance far from reassuring,—begin to get uneasy at it. This sound seemed to me the most fearful that one could hear on the ice; it was a splashing. I listened in terror; but as my companion had smiled at my first affright at Nijni, I did not venture, till after a long interval, to reveal it to him this time.
Through an excess of amour-propre which I probably now derived from intercourse with Russians, I was just going to allow him to fall off asleep, when I was splashed full in the face, and my terror, excited to its highest pitch, could no longer be smothered. I started up, leaping almost over Constantine, who, to use a Siberian saying, “was snoring enough to frighten the wolves.” It was but a poor resource against actual danger. Whilst I was rousing him, my wits seemed to be going a-wool-gathering; what wonderful feat were they not going to perform in such a peril as this? My imagination in fact, stirred up, no doubt, by the poesy of the journey, brought to my mind Dame Fortune saving the life of a sleeping infant on the brink of a well. The complete absence of wheels, however, soon brought me round to sober reality, and I explained the situation to Constantine with a conciseness that might serve as a model to many an orator. He questioned the yemschik on the matter, who replied with complete indifference: “Yes, sir, it is thawing; but it is merely the snow melting: the ice is just as thick as ever.”
The sky being very cloudy, the night was profoundly dark. Experience principally served to guide the driver in his course, and then the water—a fatal indication, indeed, of the way, when this way is over the bed of a frozen river! I crept back, without saying a word more, into the bottom of the sledge; but I must admit that it seemed to me that the ice successively yielded, cracked, and opened, and then, freezing over again with sufficient thickness, bore us up firmly. What does not the imagination shadow forth to an excited brain?
Gradually, but very gradually, the day came forth, or it would be more exact to say rather a kind of twilight, for a thick fog veiled nearly every object from our eyes. The summits of the hills that continuously command the right bank of the Volga marked a shadow on the horizon barely more sombre. Everything else appeared confounded in a general grey hue, and nothing, not even the shore, could be distinguished. Our ears soon began to catch the ominous sounds of a crackling under the horses’ feet, thereby announcing that the thaw had begun its work, now, indeed, on the ice. Then we could just distinguish very portentous fissures, starting right and left under the passage of the sledge. The yemschik at last, discovering that the situation was becoming perilous, thought it now high time to take precautions. He therefore dashed on as if chased by a pack of famishing wolves as far as the first village, and here we were glad to set foot at last on terra firma.
The following night snow began to fall, to our great discomfiture; for no state of the atmosphere here is so disagreeable to travellers in a sledge only partially closed.
Fatigued