The spring of 1814 marked an unprecedented historical turning point for Europe. The entry of the Allied armies into Paris signified not merely the collapse of Napoleon’s empire, but also a meeting of two worlds. For a Russian officer who had traversed the path from the burning of Moscow to the banks of the Seine, Paris emerged not as the “earthly paradise” promised by French tutors, but as a complex social labyrinth in which architectural magnificence stood side by side with moral degradation.
The initial impressions of Paris among Russian soldiers were far from enthusiastic. Officers remarked upon the narrowness and filth of the streets and upon a peculiar odor that contrasted sharply with the outward splendor of the central quarters. In order to avoid hostile glances and unpleasant encounters, many Russian officers changed into civilian attire upon arrival—frock coats and round hats—instantly transforming themselves into “Parisian citizens.” Prices for the “liberators” were exorbitant: the rent for respectable rooms at the Hôtel de Valois was three times higher than that charged to local residents.
A special place in these sketches is devoted to the Parisian passion for food. The French had elevated gastronomy to the rank of a science, in which “discourse on dishes” was regarded as more important than many fundamental questions of life. The Beauvilliers restaurant is described as a “palace of the Sybarite,” where mirrored walls and chandeliered ceilings created the atmosphere of a temple of taste. Yet the profusion of names on the menu—up to twenty designations for a simple cut of beef—appeared to the Russian observer less as refinement than as excessive coquetry and an attempt to extract additional money from foreigners.
The principal “concentration of temptations” was acknowledged to be the Palais-Royal. This complex was described as a “city within a city,” where everything could be found, from the latest political journals to roulette tables at which fortunes were lost within minutes. The Palais-Royal appeared to the officer as a place where “the flames of all passions were fanned.” Galleries illuminated with dazzling brilliance, thousands of shops offering luxury goods, and crowds of “seductresses” luring inexperienced youth together created the image of a “new Babylon,” in which morality was sacrificed to gold.
A visit to the Louvre (the Musée Napoléon) evoked among Russian officers a profound reverence for art, mingled with bitterness at the realization of how these treasures had been assembled. The statues of the Apollo Belvedere, the Medici Venus, and the Laocoön, removed by Napoleon from Italy, astonished viewers with their apparent “non-human craftsmanship” and with the sense of life embodied in marble. Glinka notes that the glory of a people lends luster to its language and expresses the hope that, after Russia’s victory, Europe would begin to read Lomonosov and Karamzin with the same zeal that Russian nobles had devoted to French novels.
In characterizing the Parisians, the author employs the metaphor of a “weathervane” (girouette), which turns in whichever direction the wind blows. Those who had worshiped Napoleon yesterday now extolled Louis XVIII, while the sincerity of such devotion invariably aroused suspicion. At the same time, the officer gives due credit to universal literacy: in France, everyone read—from the wealthy to the day laborer.
Paris in 1814, as seen through the eyes of a Russian officer, was a city conquered by courage yet astonished by magnanimity. The observer urges his compatriots to adopt from the French not a “depravity of morals” or fleeting fashions, but a “noble inclination toward the encouragement of the sciences and the arts.” Paris remained in memory as a “magnificent dream,” in which beneath the brilliance of civilization lay the deep scars of revolutions and wars.
Paris of that era may be compared to a precious antique casket whose exquisite exterior carving conceals within it both the rarest pearls of human genius and the dust of old sins. Russian officers opened this casket not in order to appropriate it for themselves, but to study its mechanism and, having closed it, to return it to its rightful owner.
