CHAPTER 13.
Appearance of the Country.--Character of the Russians.
I was always advancing nearer to Moscow, but nothing yet indicated
the approach to a capital. The wooden villages were equally distant
from each other, we saw no greater movement upon the immense plains
which are called high roads; you heard no more noise; the country
houses were not more numerous: there is so much space in Russia that
every thing is lost in it, even the chateaux, even the population.
You might suppose you were travelling through a country from which
the people had just taken their departure. The absence of birds adds
to this silence; cattle also are rare, or at least they are placed
at a great distance from the road. Extent makes every thing
disappear, except extent itself, like certain ideas in metaphysics,
of which the mind can never get rid, when it has once seized them.
On the eve of my arrival at Moscow, I stopped in the evening of a
very hot day, in a pleasant meadow: the female peasants, in
picturesque dresses, according to the custom of the country, were
returning from their labour, singing those airs of the Ukraine, the
words of which, in praise of love and liberty, breathe a sort of
melancholy approaching to regret. I requested them to dance, and
they consented. I know nothing more graceful than these dances of
the country, which have all the originality which nature gives to
the fine arts; a certain modest voluptuousness was remarkable in
them; the Indian bayaderes should have something analogous to that
mixture of indolence and vivacity which forms the charm of the
Russian dance.
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