THE BEGINNINGS 17impatient sovereign did not like to see the realization of his will
postponed for long. So, Paul ordered to round up several prominent
merchants of St. Petersburg, to lock them into a wing of the palace
at Gatchina, and not to let them out until they had presented the
draft of an acceptable commercial code. As the merchants might not
be familiar with the technicalities and style of government papers,
Speransky was assigned to help them. To make sure that the merchants
did not become life-long prisoners at the palace, maintained at
government expense without any benefit to the state, Paul set a time
limit of two days at the expiration of which the merchants and
Speransky must present the code, or else march off to Siberia. We
can easily imagine the fright and despondency of the hapless merchants
locked in the palace. But Speransky did not lose his head. The whole
evening and part of the night he spent in talking to each merchant,
asking specific questions on various aspects of their commercial activities.
Oh the basis of this information, he drafted an outline for a commercial
code by the following morning. The Emperor glanced at it, approved
it; the merchants were released with gifts, and Speransky's reputation
as a bureaucratic virtuoso soared sky-high.l Fortunately for Russian
trade, Paul's interest in the code vanished as suddenly as it had
arisen, so that Speransky's hasty improvisation was spared the test of
application.
The growing reputation of the young official led to Speransky's
appointment to the bureau of the Chief of Provisions for the Capital
in 1799. Not only did this new function implement his modest income
by 2,000 rubles a year for relatively little work; it also made his name
known to the Chief of Provisions, Grand Duke Alexander, Paul's heir.
The documents that have come down to us do not indicate that
Speransky met Grand Duke Alexander personally at the time, but his
written reports, no doubt, came to the attention of his chief, the
future Emperor.
In the short span of not quite four years, the poor son of a village
priest, the brilliant student of a theological seminary, and young
private secretary to Prince Kurakin had attained a prominent and
secure position in the central administration of the· Empire. His
career seemed to take very favorable shape and promised him a brilliant
future. But in other ways, too, these years proved extremely rewarding
and fruitful.
As he was rising in the ranks of the imperial bureaucracy, Speransky
~ A. Fateev, "K istorii i teorii kodifikatsii," p. 5 and Grech, Zapiski 0 moei zhizni,
pp.64-65.