Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/121



Later.

Alice and I have been painting from the same model,—a little Italian whom she found in the street. He is named Alberto, and he says that he came alone from Naples. He talks freely enough, but I have been unable to discover his reason for leaving the sunny land of his birth to visit this inhospitable climate. I asked him if the Russians were not very poor.

"Oh, no!" he cried, and went on to describe the moujik's life as quite a paradise compared with that of the Italian peasant.

There is such a depth of ignorance in the faces of some of these moujiks! I wish I could speak Russian; I should like to be able to ask questions, and learn something about this strange people.

"You Russians," I said to Nicolas the other day, "are so—I hardly know how to express it—so light. There seems no depth to you, no earnestness."

"You forget," he answered gravely, "that you only know the society element, which is much alike in all countries. Strangers come here, stay a year or two in Petersburg, and then go away and write a book, thinking they know all about us. What does a man understand of America who goes to New York and Newport only, and spends his time in society and at the clubs?"

"True," I replied. "It is unjust."

So I have given up trying to judge the Russians. I take them as I find them,—a kind-hearted, hospitable, cordial, highly cultivated nation; and I find them extremely pleasant to live with. The women look much