The fencing master, p.17
THE FENCING MASTER, page 17
As it has been stated by some that this melancholy was the effect of remorse, we will narrate faithfully what was the cause of it.
CHAPTER XII
AT the death of his mother, Catherine II., Paul I. ascended the throne, from which no doubt he would have been excluded for ever, had not his son Alexander refused to lend himself to the designs which were aimed against him. Long exiled from Court, always separated from his children, for the education of whom their grandmother was responsible, the new Emperor brought to the administration of supreme affairs, so long directed by the genius of Catherine and the devotion of Potemkin, a character at once suspicious, sullen and fantastic, and during the short period he remained on the throne made of the Russian Court a spectacle almost incomprehensible to the neighbouring nations and his brother kings.
The lamentable cry which Catherine had uttered, after thirty-seven hours of agony, was the signal in the palace that proclaimed Paul I. autocrat of all the Russians. At this cry the Empress Marie fell at her husband’s knees with her children round her, and was the first to hail him Czar. Paul raised them up assuring them of his goodwill as a father and an Emperor. Then the Court, represented by the leading statesmen and generals, the nobility and courtiers, passed in review before him, prostrating themselves in due order of rank, each according to his position and seniority. After them a detachment of Guards, brought round beneath the palace windows had, together with the officers and guards, just arrived from Gatchina, the former residence of Paul, sworn allegiance to their sovereign, over whom the previous evening they had been keeping guard, more with the idea of being answerable for him than of paying him an attention, and rather as a prisoner than a sovereign.
Then were heard loud words of command, the clashing of arms, the tramp of heavy boots and the clanking of spurs, in the very room where Catherine had just fallen into her last sleep. On the following day Paul I. was proclaimed Emperor and his son Alexander Czarevitch or heir presumptive to the throne.
Paul came to the throne after thirty-five years of privations, exile and contempt, and at forty-three years of age he found himself master of the kingdom in which the previous day he had only possessed a prison. During these thirty-five years he had suffered much and as a consequence learnt much; so when he appeared on the throne his pockets were stuffed with decrees he had drawn up during his exile, orders which he busied himself in carrying out with a strange haste, one after the other and sometimes all together.
At first, in utter disregard of Catherine’s methods, towards whom his ill-feeling, gradually embittered and now transformed to hatred, was manifest in every action, he surrounded himself with his children, as handsome and rich a family as any among the reigning houses of Europe, and appointed the Grand Duke Alexander military governor of St. Petersburg. As for the Empress Marie, who up till then had good reason to complain of his estrangement, now with astonishment mingled with fear she witnessed his kind and affectionate behaviour towards her. Her allowances were doubled, but she still doubted; but presently he accompanied his favours with caresses, and then at length she believed; for she owned a mother’s saintly soul and a woman’s noble heart.
Owing to his mania for opposition, which was characteristic of him, and was always displayed when least expected, Paul’s first ukase was to counter order a levy of recruits, lately ordered by Catherine, which was to be spread over the whole kingdom, embracing one serf in every hundred. This was an act of diplomacy, as well as a humane measure; for it secured to the Emperor the gratitude of the nobility, who felt the burden of this military tithe, and likewise the love of the peasants, who would have to pay for it in kind.
Zubov, the last favourite of Catherine, thought that by losing his sovereign he was losing everything, and was fearful not only for his liberty but for his life. Paul summoned him, confirmed his appointment, and when handing him back the governor’s staff carried by the aide-de-camp-in-chief which he had given up, said to him: “Continue to fulfil your duties near my mother’s body; I hope you will serve me as faithfully as you have served her.”
Kosciusko had been captured; he was confined in the Castle of the lately deceased Count of Anhalt, and had for his custodian a major who never left him, even taking his meals with him. Paul himself went to set him free and announced his liberty to him.
As the Polish General, bewildered and astonished at the interview, had allowed the Emperor to depart without paying him the thanks which he thought were his due, he arranged that he should be carried to the palace with his head enveloped in bandages, for he was still weak and ailing from his wounds. He was conducted into the presence of the Emperor and Empress, and Paul offered him a well-populated estate in Russia, but Kosciusko refused and asked for a sum of money instead, that he might go and die where he liked. Paul gave him a hundred thousand roubles, and Kosciusko left the country and died in Switzerland.
While carrying out these orders, which completely disposed of everyone’s fears and presaged a noble reign, the moment arrived for performing the funeral rites in honour of Catherine. Then did Paul decide to accomplish a two-fold filial duty. For thirty-five years the name of Peter III. had been spoken with bated breath at St. Petersburg. Paul repaired to the Monastery of St. Alexander Nevski, where the unfortunate Emperor had been buried; he was shown his father’s neglected tomb by an old monk, had the coffin opened, knelt before the august remains, and drawing off the glove which covered the skeleton’s hand, kissed it several times. Then, having prayed long and piously beside the coffin, he had it brought up into the centre of the church and gave orders that the same religious services should be accorded to the remains of Peter as would be celebrated over the body of Catherine, now lying in state in the halls of the palace. Then having unearthed from his retreat, where he had been living in disgrace for the third of a century, Baron Ungern Hernberg, his father’s old body servant, he commanded him to be brought into a room in the palace where was a portrait of Peter III., and when the old man had come: “I have summoned you,” said the Emperor, “in order that this portrait, in default of my father’s presence, may witness my gratitude towards his faithful friends.” Then leading him in front of the picture, as if the painted eyes could see what was about to happen, he embraced the old warrior, made him a General, placed round his neck the ribbon of St. Alexander Nevski, and ordered him to keep watch and ward by his father’s body, wearing the same uniform that he had worn as Peter’s aide-de-camp.
The day of the funeral ceremony arrived; Peter III. had never been crowned, and this was the excuse for burying him as an ordinary Russian nobleman in the Church of St. Alexander Nevski.
Paul I. placed a crown on his coffin and had it conveyed to the palace to be exposed to view near Catherine’s corpse; thence the remains of the two sovereigns were borne to the citadel, placed on the same bier, and for a whole week the courtiers with servility and the people with affection, came and kissed the livid hand of the Empress and the coffin of the Emperor.
At the foot of this double tomb, which he came to visit like the rest, Paul I. seemed to have forgotten his piety and prudence. When alone in his prison at Gatchina with two or three companies of guards, he had directed his attention to petty military details and sometimes spent whole hours in polishing the buttons of his uniforms with the same care and assiduity that Potemkin devoted to cleaning his diamonds.
Thus on the very morning of his accession, everything in the palace took on a fresh complexion, and the new Emperor before busying himself with affairs of state, began to put in execution all the minute changes which he had made up his mind to introduce in the drill and accoutrements of his soldiers. About three o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, he went down into the courtyard to put his soldiers through their manœuvres and exercises according to his peculiar ideas. This inspection which took place every day was called by him the “watch parade,” and became not only the most important institution in his government, but actually the pivot of the whole administration of the kingdom. At this parade he read his reports, gave his orders, issued his ukases, and was presented to his officers.
There between the two Archdukes, Alexander and Constantine, every day for three hours, in spite of the cold, wearing no furs, with his bald head uncovered, with the wind in his face, with one hand behind his back, while with the other he alternately raised and lowered his cane and shouted, “Ras, diva! ras diva” (“one two! one two! “), he might be observed stamping his feet to keep warm and taking a pride in defying twenty degrees of frost.
Soon insignificant military details developed into affairs of state, he first of all changed the colour of the Russian cockade, which was white, for a black cockade with a yellow border; and this was an advantage, for the Emperor truly remarked that white could be seen from a distance, and only served as a point at which to aim, while black would mingle with the colour of the cap and by virtue of the identity of tone the enemy would no longer know where to direct their fire. But reforms did not stop here; he altered the colour of the plume, the height of the boots and the buttons of the gaiters; so much so that the greatest proof of zeal that could be shown him was to appear on the morrow at the watch parade with the changes he had introduced the day before, and more than once this promptness in falling in with his ridiculous orders was rewarded by a decoration or a promotion.
Notwithstanding Paul’s partiality for his soldiers, whom he dressed and undressed ceaselessly like a child with its doll, his reforms were also occasionally directed against civilians. The French Revolution, by bringing round hats into fashion, produced in him a feeling of horror for this form of head covering; so one fine morning an order appeared prohibiting the wearing of round hats in the streets of St. Petersburg. Either through ignorance or opposition, the observance of this rule was not initiated quickly enough to please the Emperor. Then he placed at every street corner details of Cossacks and military police, with orders to knock off all the objectionable hats; he was driven through the streets in a sleigh to see for himself how St. Petersburg regarded his latest edict. One day he was returning to the palace with satisfaction after a tour of inspection, when he caught sight of an Englishman who, thinking that the ukase as to hats was an outrage on the liberty of the subject, had not submitted to the change. The Emperor immediately stops and orders one of his officers to go and knock off the hat of the impudent foreigner who dares to defy him actually in the Admiralty Square; the officer sets out at a gallop, comes up to the delinquent and finds him wearing a three cornered hat. The messenger, disappointed, wheels round and returns to make his report. The Emperor fancying that his eyes have deceived him, draws out his field glasses and levels them at the Englishman, who calmly continues his walk. The officer was mistaken, the Englishman is wearing a round hat; the officer is put under arrest and an aide-decamp is sent in his stead; keen to please the Emperor the aide-de-camp spurs on his horse at the gallop, and in a few seconds comes up with the Englishman.
No, the Emperor is mistaken, the Englishman has a three cornered hat. The aide-de-camp, much crestfallen, returns to his sovereign and gives the same answer as the officer. The Emperor once more uses his glasses and the aide-de-camp is sent to join the officer; the Englishman has a round hat. Then a general offers to undertake the task which has ended so disastrously for his predecessors, and gallops towards the stranger without taking his eyes off him. Then he notices that as he approaches, the hat gradually changes its shape from round to triangular; fearful of such a disgrace as has befallen the officer and the aide-de-camp, he conducts the Englishman into the Emperor’s presence and all is explained. The worthy islander, wishing to reconcile his native pride with the whims of a foreign ruler, had had a special hat made, and by means of a little spring concealed in the inside he could in a moment alter it from the prohibited to the lawful shape. The Emperor who was tickled at the idea, pardons the aide-de-camp and the officer, and allows the Englishman for the future to wear whatever hat he pleases.
The regulation with regard to hats was followed by one affecting vehicles. One morning a decree was published in St. Petersburg, prohibiting the harnessing of horses in the Russian fashion, that is with a postilion riding the off horse and having the shaft horse on his near side. A fortnight was allowed the proprietors of barouches, landaus, droskies to obtain German harness, after which date the police were commanded to cut the traces of all carriages not fitted with the regulation harness. Moreover the reforms did not stop at the carriages but proceeded to the drivers; the coachmen were ordered to dress in the German mode. So they were obliged, to their great grief, to clip their beards and sew on to their coat collars a pigtail which was to remain in the same position always, however much they might move their heads from side to side. An officer who had not had time to fall in with the latest order, decided to go on foot to the watch parade rather than annoy the Emperor by the sight of a proscribed vehicle. He wrapped himself in a large cloak and gave his sword to a soldier to carry, when he was met by Paul who noticed the breach of discipline; the officer was degraded to the ranks, while the private was given an officer’s commission.
Among all these changes etiquette was not forgotten. An old law decreed that when anyone met the Emperor or the Empress or the Czarevitch, he was to stop his carriage or horse and, dismounting, to prostrate himself in the dust or the mud or the snow. This homage so difficult to pay in a capital where thousands of carriages are passing along each street at all hours of the day, had been abolished in Catherine’s reign. At his accession Paul put it in force again in all its severity. A General whose servants did not recognise the Emperor’s carriage was deprived of his arms and placed under arrest; when his imprisonment terminated, they were about to give him back his sword, but he refused to take it, declaring that it was a sword of honour presented by Catherine, with the proviso that it should never be taken from him. Paul examined the sword and perceived that it was of gold and studded with diamonds; then he summoned the General, restored him his sword, saying that he bore him no grudge, but nevertheless he ordered him to set out for the army within twenty-four hours.
Unluckily matters did not always end in such a satisfactory fashion. One day, M. de Likarov, one of the most gallant Brigadiers in the Emperor’s service, fell ill in the country. His wife, not wishing to entrust such an important errand to a subordinate, came to St. Petersburg herself to procure a doctor; as ill luck would have it she met the Emperor’s carriage. Since she and her servants had been absent from the capital for three months, none of them had heard of the new regulations, so her carriage passed along without stopping a short distance from Paul who was riding on horseback. Such a flagrant breach of his injunction wounded the Emperor’s feelings keenly, so he at once despatched an aide-de-camp after the refractory vehicle, with orders to enlist the four servants as soldiers and to confine their mistress in prison; the lady lost her reason and her husband died.
The rules of etiquette were quite as harsh in the interior of the Palace as in the streets of the capital; every courtier admitted to the function of kissing the royal hand, was obliged to make the kiss resound with his lips and touch the floor with his knee; Prince George Galitzin was sent to prison for not having bowed sufficiently low, and for having kissed the hand somewhat carelessly.
These outrageous acts, which we pick haphazard from the history of Paul I. had, after four years, rendered a longer reign almost impossible, for day by day the little reason remaining to the Emperor grew less, disappearing before some fresh act of folly; and the follies of an all powerful sovereign, from whom the least sign is instantly converted into a command, are dangerous things. Thus Paul felt instinctively that an unknown danger, but none the less a real one, was closing round him, and fear rather increased the capricious instability of his mind. He practically retired to the St. Michael Palace which had been built for him on the old site of the Summer Palace. This edifice, coloured in red to please the taste of one of his mistresses, who had appeared one evening in court with gloves of that colour, was a huge building in wretched style and bristling with bastions; here, alone, did the Emperor fancy himself safe.
Meanwhile, in the midst of executions, exiles and degradations, two favourites remained rooted to their posts. One was Kutaïsov, originally a Turkish slave, who from his position of Emperor’s barber had become one of the chief personages in the country, without the least qualification to merit such a distinction; the other was Count Pahlen, a nobleman from Courland and a major-general under Catherine II., who had been raised to the position of Civil Governor of Riga, through the favour of Zubov, the last protégé of the Empress.
It so happened that the Emperor Paul, sometime before his accession to the throne, passed through the town; this was at the time when he was almost proscribed, and the courtiers hardly dared to address him. Pahlen paid him the honours due to a Czarevitch. Paul not being accustomed to such deference, preserved in his heart the recollection of it, and when once he was on the throne, called to memory the reception afforded him by Pahlen, summoned him to St. Petersburg, decorated him with the chief orders of the Empire and appointed him in command of the Guards and Governor of the city, in place of the grand Duke Alexander, his son, whom he mistrusted in spite of his respect and affection.
But Pahlen, thanks to his elevated position in the immediate circle of Paul, which he had already preserved for nearly four years, contrary to all expectations, could better appreciate than anyone the instability of human fortunes. He had seen so many men rise, and so many succumb; he had seen so many others fall and come to grief that he could not understand how it was that his downfall had not yet arrived, but he made up his mind that the Emperor’s ruin should forestall his. Zubov, his old patron, who had been nominated general aide-de-camp of the palace by the Emperor and entrusted with the guardianship of his mother’s corpse; Zubov, Pahlen’s former patron, suddenly fell into disgrace, and one day found himself deprived of his chancellorship; his two chief secretaries, Altesti and Gribovski, were dismissed most unfairly, while all his staff officers and suite were required forthwith to rejoin their regiments or hand in their resignations. By way of compensation, the Emperor with strange inconsistency, made him a present of a palace; but his disgrace was none the less complete, for the next day all h s orders had been countermanded; and on the day after he was obliged to dismiss five-and-twenty or thirty dependents whom he employed, and in less than a week he had obtained permission, or rather been ordered, to leave Russia. Zubov retired to Germany, where his wealth, youth and handsome person, adorned with decorations, added to his high sprits, were a tribute to the good taste of Catherine, proving that she adhered to a high ideal even in her weaknesses.
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