A Herzen Reader

Herzen had received anonymous letters of abuse after his article "Irkutsk and Pe­tersburg" (Doc. 80).

The accused had pawned his coat in order to purchase this cheap weapon, which wound up injuring him instead of the tsar.

Paulin Limayrac, the chief editor of the newspaper, made note of pro-Polish dem­onstrators in Paris during the days leading up to the 6 th of June.

Chief of gendarmes Shuvalov, who had accompanied Alexander to Paris, took part in the first round of interrogations.

The Bell, No. 243, June 15, 1867. A decade earlier, Herzen had begun what he expected to be a continuing series about trips taken by members of the tsar's family (Doc. 11). "Venerable Travelers (Part Two)" has much more in common with the themes that interested him in 1867 than it has with his earlier satirical travelogue. Herzen started writing this article about the tsar's journey to Paris before the Berezovsky story broke, and completed it afterward. Bakunin thoroughly approved of this piece, which he said reminded him of the young Alexander Herzen, "whose wise and fresh laughter had such a powerful and beneficial impact on Russia. Remain our powerful Voltaire. In this lies your truth and your power" (Let 4:425). Herzen's comment that in the age of the telegram one need only travel for amusement—and never for business—remains remarkably fresh after 150 years.

Venerable Travelers (Part Two) [1867]

Nous sommes aujourd'hui ce que nous avons ete hier. continuons.

—Sieyes, 1789

We faced a question a la Shpekin,[2] to print or not to print our report on the first part of the sovereign's journey after the June 6th shot. The question was decided by the fact that, after the shot, the journey continued even more pleasantly than before. The genuine success of the journey began at that point: ovations, speeches, and open carriages. In addition, they are all military men—and what sort of military man worries the next day about a bullet that did not hit him, but hit the ear of a horse ridden by Mocquard's son-in-law?²

It is time, however, to stop shooting, or else a future Karamzin will have to deal with a new history so full of bullets, double-barreled pistols, and a nonsensical amount of speeches and telegrams, that he will have to ask Turgenev for the right to name it Stories About Unsuccessful Hunters.

³

June 10

mother." Ten years later we are called upon to say a few words about the travels of the obviously "not widowed emperor." There is something mysti­cal in this: between us and the great traveler there is a mysterious connec­tion, about which we will definitely consult with Hume.⁴ We were both in Vyatka in i837,⁵ and in Paris he is staying on the same street where we lived in i847,⁶ so that the sovereign could write a final "Letter from Avenue Marigny" for The Contemporary

if Valuev had not shut it down.⁷

But now to business. You are familiar with the beginning of the journey, or, as Russian newspaper disciplinarians say, of "the imperial procession," but what about its goal?

"It is not known!"

"Would you be interested in knowing?"

"Very much so."

"How can there not be any?"

First of all, we absolutely do not believe that the sovereign came to Paris on business.

No one goes anywhere on business these days: with ministers and correspondence, with counts and telegrams,⁸ one can take care of not only every kind of business, but also every kind of idleness. Alexander Niko- laevich wanted to have a good time, and Napoleon wanted to show off a piece de resistance like the tsar—see, he says, "who we are entertaining". And with Turkey, what will be will be⁹—it was not accustomed to fatalism.

Second. we find the first reason sufficient, and, according to Leibniz, where one reason is sufficient, there is no point in looking for others.¹⁰

Alexander Nikolaevich did Napoleon a good deed, and unburdened himself of the tedium of Petersburg. The Byzantine-Darmstadt piety¹¹ had reached the point of suffocation in the Winter Palace, and instead of amusements, there were Austrian and Turkish Slavs, with whom one had to speak German¹² in order to understand their Russian feelings and their conversations with the devout subjects of Her Majesty. No matter how in­credibly pious an autocrat might be, there is only so much piety he can take. Life was unbearable.

The French got angry in vain that the sovereign did not bring the es­teemed empress with him—it was a bit of good luck and a tactful move. Let her pray for his health and preservation from all of France's intrigues and ailments, while he was able to relax a little in freedom. He had some mas­culine concerns to attend to. and he did not waste a second. [. . .]