Part 8 (1/2)
In vain did I attempt to make my daughter understand how unlikely in every way this marriage was to make her happy. Her head was so far turned that she would take nothing from my affection and experience.
On the other hand, people who had determined to get my consent employed all possible means to wring it from me. I was told that M.
Nigris would carry off my daughter and that they would marry at some country inn. I had little faith in this elopement and secret marriage, because M. Nigris had no fortune, and the family that befriended him was not blessed with superfluous money. I was threatened with the Emperor, and I answered, ”Then I will tell him that mothers have truer and older rights than all the emperors in the world!” It will scarcely be credited that the persons intriguing against me were so sure of making me yield under persecution that they were already throwing out allusions to a marriage portion. As I was supposed to be very rich, the amba.s.sador from Naples came to see me and asked a sum which far exceeded my possessions. I had left France with eighty louis in my pocket, and a portion of my savings I had since lost through the Bank of Venice.
I could have endured the malignant and stupid slanders which the cabal spread, and which were repeated to me from all sides; it pained me much more to see my daughter becoming alienated and withdrawing all her confidence from me. Her old governess, Mme. Charrot, who had already made the great mistake of allowing her to read novels without my knowledge, had totally dominated her mind and embittered her against me to such a degree that all a mother's love was impotent to fight against her sinister influence. At last my daughter, who had become thin and changed, fell ill altogether. I was then, of course, obliged to surrender, and wrote to M. Lebrun, so that he might send his approval. M. Lebrun had in recent letters spoken of his wish to marry our daughter to Guerin, whose successes in painting had been bruited loud enough to reach my ears. But this plan, which had such attractions for me, now could not be carried out. I informed M.
Lebrun, making him feel that, having but this one dear child, we must sacrifice everything to her desires and her happiness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF MME. LEBRUN'S DAUGHTER
In the Bologna Gallery.]
The letter gone, I had the satisfaction of seeing my daughter recover; but alas! that satisfaction was the only one she gave me. Owing to the distance, her father's answer was long delayed, and some one convinced her that I had only written to M. Lebrun to prevent him from a.s.senting to what she called her felicity. The suspicion hurt me cruelly; nevertheless, I wrote again several times, and, after letting her read my letters, gave them to her, so that she might post them herself.
Even this great condescension on my part was not enough to undeceive her. With the distrust toward me that was incessantly being poured into her, she said to me one day, ”I post your letters, but I am sure you write others to the contrary.” I was stunned and heartbroken, when at that very moment the postman arrived with a letter from M. Lebrun giving his consent. A mother might then, without being accused of exaction, have expected some excuses or thanks; but in order to have it understood how entirely those wicked people had estranged my daughter's heart, I will confess that the cruel child showed not the least grat.i.tude at what I had done for her in immolating all my wishes, hopes and dislikes.
The wedding was nevertheless enacted a few days later. I gave my daughter a very fine wedding outfit and some jewellery, including a bracelet, mounted with some large diamonds, on which was her father's likeness. Her marriage portion, the product of the portraits I had painted at St. Petersburg, I deposited with the banker Livio.
The day after my daughter's wedding I went to see her. I found her placid and unelated over her bliss. Being at her house again a fortnight later, I made the inquiry, ”You are very happy, I trust, now that you are married to him?” M. Nigris, who was talking with some one else, had his back turned to us, and, since he was afflicted with a severe cold, had a heavy great coat on his shoulders. She replied, ”I confess that fur coat is disenchanting; how could you expect me to be smitten with such a figure as that?” Thus a fortnight had sufficed for love to evaporate.
As for me, the whole charm of my life seemed to be irretrievably destroyed. I even felt no joy in loving my daughter, though G.o.d knows how much I still did love her, in spite of all her wrongdoing. Only mothers will fully understand me. Soon after her marriage she took the smallpox. Although I had never had that frightful disease, no one succeeded in preventing me from hastening to her side. Her face was so swelled up that I was seized with terror. But it was only for her that I feared, and as long as the illness lasted I thought not of myself for a single moment. At last I was glad to see her restored without being marked in the least.
I then resolved to leave for Moscow. I wanted a change from St.
Petersburg, where I had been suffering to such a degree that my health was affected. Not that after the wedding the wretched stories which had been brought up against me left any impression. On the contrary, the people who had blackened my character most repented of their injustice. However, I was unable to shake off the memory of the past months. I felt miserable, but kept my trouble to myself; I complained of no one. I observed silence, even with my dearest friends, on the subject of my daughter and the man she had given me for a son, going so far as reticence toward my brother, to whom I had written frequently since being apprised by him of another misfortune. Indeed, this period of my life was devoted to tears: we had lost our mother.
Hoping, then, to obtain relief from so much sorrow through distraction and a change of scene, I hastened the life-sized portrait I was then doing of the Empress Maria, as well as several half-length portraits, and left for Moscow on the 15th of October, 1800.
CHAPTER XII
MOSCOW
JOURNEY TO MOSCOW -- A BAD SMELL AND ITS ORIGIN -- FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MOSCOW -- ANOTHER IMPRESSION, ORAL AND UNPLEASING -- THE KREMLIN -- STEAM-AND-SNOW BATHING -- SOCIETY -- LUXURIOUS PRINCE KURAKIN -- AN IMPOSSIBLE DUOLOGUE -- EXAMPLES OF RUSSIAN CLEVERNESS -- DETERMINATION TO RETURN TO FRANCE.
No more dreadful fatigue can be imagined than that which awaited me in the journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The roads I counted upon as being frozen--as I had been led to believe--were not yet in that condition. The roads, in fact, were terrible; the logs, which rendered them almost impracticable in severe weather, not being as yet fixed by the frost, rolled incessantly under the wheels, and produced the same effect as waves of the sea. My carriage was half-covered with mud, and gave us such terrible shocks that at every moment I expected to give up the ghost. For the sake of some relief from this torture, I stopped half-way at the inn of Novgorod, the only one on the route, where--so I had been informed--I should be well fed and lodged. Being greatly in want of rest, and faint with hunger, I asked for a room. Hardly was I installed when I noticed a pestilential smell that made me sick. The master of the inn, whom I begged to change my room, had no other to give me, and I therefore resigned myself. But soon, seeming to observe that the intolerable stench came from a glazed door in the room, I called for a waiter, and questioned him as to the door. ”Oh!” he calmly replied, ”there has been a dead man behind that door since yesterday. That is probably what you smell.” I waited for no further particulars, got up, had my horses harnessed, and started, taking nothing with me but a piece of bread to continue my journey to Moscow.
I had accomplished but half of the journey whose second part was to be more fatiguing than the first. Not that there were any high hills, but the road consisted of perpetual ups and downs--which I called torture.
The climax to my annoyance was that I could not amuse myself with a view of the country through which I was travelling, since a thick fog veiled the scene on all sides, and this always depresses me. If one considers, besides these tribulations, the diet I was restricted to after I had eaten my piece of bread, it will readily be conceived that I must have found the road very long.
At length I arrived in the former immense capital of Russia. I seemed to be entering Ispahan, of which place I had seen several drawings, so much does the aspect of Moscow differ from everything else in Europe.
Nor will I attempt to describe the effect of those thousands of gilded cupolas surmounted with huge gold crosses, those broad streets, those superb palaces, for the most part situated so far asunder that villages intervened. To obtain a right idea of Moscow, you must see it.
I was driven to the mansion which M. Dimidoff had been kind enough to lend me. This enormous building had in front of it a large courtyard surrounded by very high railings. It was untenanted, and I promised myself perfect peace. After all my fatigue and my forced diet, my first concern, as soon as I had appeased my hunger, was, of course, to sleep. But, bad luck to it! at five o'clock in the morning I was awakened with a start by an infernal din. A large troop of those Russian musicians who only blow one note each on their horns had established themselves in the room next to mine to practise. Perhaps the room was very s.p.a.cious and the only one suitable for this kind of rehearsal. I was careful to inquire of the porter if this music was played every day. Upon his answer that, the palace being uninhabited, the largest apartment had been devoted to this purpose, I resolved to make no change in the customs of a house that was not my own, and to look for another lodging.
In one of my first expeditions I called on the Countess Strogonoff, the wife of my good old friend. I found her hoisted on the top of some very high affair which did nothing but rock to and fro. I could not imagine how she could endure this perpetual motion, but she wanted it for her health, as she was unable to walk. But this did not prevent her being agreeable to me. I spoke to her of the embarra.s.sment I was in on account of lodgings. She at once told me she had a pretty house that was not occupied, and begged me to accept it, but because she would hear nothing of my paying a rent, I positively declined the offer. Seeing that her efforts were in vain, she sent for her daughter, who was very pretty, and asked me to paint this young person's portrait in payment of rent, to which I agreed with pleasure.
Thus, a few days later, I settled in a house where I hoped to find quiet, since I was to live there alone.
So soon as I was established in my new dwelling, I visited the town as often as the rigours of the season would permit. For during the five months I spent at Moscow, the snow never melted; it deprived me of the pleasure of seeing the environments, said to be admirable.
Moscow is at least ten miles round. The Moskva cuts through the town, and is joined by two other small streams, and it is really an astonis.h.i.+ng sight--all those palaces, those finely sculptured public monuments, those convents, those churches, all intermingled with pretty landscapes and villages. This mixture of urban magnificence and rural simplicity produces an extraordinary, fantastic effect, which must please the traveller who is in search of something new. The churches are so numerous in this city that a popular saying runs: ”Moscow with its forty times forty churches.” Moscow is supposed to contain 420,000 inhabitants, and commerce must be on a large scale, because in a single quarter, whose name I have forgotten, there are six thousand shops. In the quarter called the Kremlin there stands the fortress of the same name, the old palace of the czars. This fortress is as ancient as the town, said to have been built about the middle of the twelfth century, and is situated on an elevation at the foot of which flows the Moskva, but there is nothing remarkable in the style excepting its antiquity. Close to this pile, whose walls are flanked with towers, I was shown a bell of colossal dimensions half-embedded in the ground, and I was told it had never been possible to raise it in order to hang it in the palace chapel.
The cemeteries at Moscow are stupendous, and following the custom prevailing all over Russia, several times a year, but especially on the day that in Russia corresponds to our Death Day, the cemeteries are filled with vast crowds. Men and women kneel at their family tombs, and there give vent to loud lamentations, which may be heard a long way off.