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All that one needed to know was what M. Touchusoff and such people were going to say, and who would be thrown into the Neva, and the rise and fall of the rouble could be foreseen to a kopeck. In speculation by shrewd people with proper judgment as to when to buy and when to sell the rouble, large fortunes could be made, or even lost, in a day. But after all the Russian finance was simple.
By the mouth of the Neva had passed Rurik and his fellows in their journeys across the Varangian sea, their own sea. The czar was willing to restore to Sweden all his conquests in Livonia and Esthonia, but the Neva he would not yield.
The enormous palaces, the long, straight streets, the grandeur of the public buildings, the noble Neva that flows majestically through "this Queen of the cities," the three miles long Nevsky Prospect, paved with wood; all aroused in him enthusiasm and admiration. "In a word," he wrote to his mother, "I can do little else but look and wonder."
A fête given by Madame Polovtsoff, wife of the Secrétaire de l'Empire, was wonderfully conducted and organized. It took place at a villa on the Islands, as that part of St. Petersburg which lies between the two principal branches of the Neva is called. It is to villas here that the officials can retire after the season when obliged to remain near the capital.
Alexander Nevski is remembered as the hero of the Neva and of the North; yet even he was finally compelled to grovel at the feet of the barbarians. Novgorod alone had stood erect, had paid no tribute and offered no homage to the Khan. At last, when its destruction was at hand, thirty-six years after the invasion, Nevski had the heroism to submit to the inevitable. He advised a surrender.
Here, on the bank of the Neva, tradition alleges that Alexander, Prince of Novgorod, won his great battle and, incidentally, his surname of Nevsky and his post of patron saint of Russia over the united forces of the Swedes and oppressive Knights of the Teutonic Order, in the year 1240.
However, it was something to move on and know where he was going. A minute later he was still moving on, but without knowing anything. He could no longer think out his new idea. He tried to take an interest in all he saw; in the sky, in the Neva. He spoke to some children he met. He felt his epileptic condition becoming more and more developed.
According to a legend, accepted by Nestor, it was by the mouth of the Neva that the earliest Norman conquerors of the country passed on their journeys across the Varegian Sea their own sea and so to Rome. Peter would seem to have desired to take up the thread of that tradition, nine centuries old; and the story of his own foundation of the town has become legendary and epic.
There is one great event, though: N.'s "Socrates" is printed in the Neva Supplement. I have read it, but with great effort. It is not Socrates but a dull-witted, captious, opinionated man, the whole of whose wisdom and interest is confined to tripping people up over words.
Captain Lisianski then took command and moved his ships nearer the shore. A canoe with reinforcements and a supply of powder for the Indians approached among the islands but a shot from the "Neva" struck it, the powder exploded, and the Indians who were saved from the wreck were taken on board the Russian ship.
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