Chapter XII: Through the Winter (2)

Presently there was a great stir outside and we were told that the Emperor was arriving. On hearing this joyful news, an enthusiastic Pole near me spat freely into his hands and proceeded to plaster down his hair and wash his face like a cat. _Un petit bout de toilette!_ as Wigan, the great actor, used to say in _The First Night_.

The loyal joy with which the Emperor was received was very touching. As usual, he played his part most nobly, was very gracious and kingly, and as he walked round the hall had a smile and a kind word for almost every one of the men. When he had finished his round one of the men shouted in a stentorian voice: “Let us drink to the Tsar.” This raised a thunder of applause and cheering, after which the Emperor, standing in the midst of the hall, was served with a glass of wine and said: “I drink to the indissoluble union of the two nations!” This, of course, was received with yells of joy, the men cheering like Eton boys on the Fourth of June.

The Grand Duke Constantine was with the Tsar, and as he had recently returned from governing Poland, he was recognized and received a special ovation, upon which the Emperor drank to him and kissed him—he was his favourite brother, to whom he was deeply attached; the Grand Duke kissed him in return on the left breast—a pretty token of love and duty.

The Poles looked very picturesque and quaint in their national costume, but it was impossible not to be struck by the far finer appearance of their Russian compeers (of course both parties were made up more or less of picked men). Then the Russians wore beards, which so well befit the kaftan and northern dress, besides covering a multitude of sins against beauty, while the Poles were shaven, showing all their imperfections of feature. I was well pleased to have the opportunity of seeing this historic banquet. Lord Napier was the only foreigner invited, and I went in attendance upon him.

The Emperor’s staff were always worthy of his own imposing appearance. The Imperial family who surrounded him were all men of great stature and good carriage, while old Prince Suvoroff, Monsieur Valouieff, the Minister of the Interior, and many of the general officers and aides-de-camp were fine, strikingly tall men. It was a goodly company of Anakim. Monsieur Valouieff, although in civilian dress, was so handsome a figure as to be always conspicuous, even among the brilliantly accoutred warriors; perhaps, like Lord Castlereagh at Vienna, he was only the more distinguished!

It seemed a pity that in so beautiful a city, where there is a wealth of magnificent buildings, there should have been no worthier place for a really memorable feast than this mean semblance of a town hall, which certainly did not beseem the occasion.

* * * * *

Well may the Russians call the sennight that goes before Lent “the mad week.” Another name for it is _maslianitza_, or “butter week,” but I prefer the first, for indeed Bedlam is let loose and plays the wildest pranks, and no one can say that the _mujik_ takes his pleasures sadly. At the beginning of the week my coachman came to me and, according to treaty, asked leave to go and get drunk. These coachmen are really great characters. They are out in all weather, and never grumble at being kept waiting for hours when the mercury in the thermometer has almost fallen out of sight. They show no signs of boredom or weariness. My man, Mikhail, for want of better company would conjure away the tedium by talking out loud to himself. I sometimes watched him out of my window enjoying his own conversation, shaking his head, cracking jokes and laughing his heart out at them, or telling himself some tear-compelling tale of woe. He was the ugliest man in the town and as true as steel—on one condition: every now and then he must get drunk; so we entered into a solemn compact which he never broke.

He would come to me from time to time, perhaps twice in a month, and say that it was long since he had been happy—would my Excellency be pleased to name a day when it would be convenient for him to be absent—_anglice_, “get drunk.” I would look at my engagement book and see what I had to do. Monday, the French Embassy—Tuesday, a big ball—Wednesday, a ceremony at Court—should we say Thursday? “Slava Bogu” (“Glory be to God”), he would answer, “it shall be Thursday with your Excellency’s forgiveness.” On the Friday he would reappear with clockwork punctuality—a little pale and rather heavy-lidded, but perfectly cheerful. Without such an arrangement one was never safe. I had to dismiss four coachmen before I found this one, who was a treasure, and never played me false. The bargain was part of a system before which all foreigners, at any rate, had to bow lest worse befall them.

To see the saturnalia of the week at their maddest one had to go to the great Admiralty Place, the huge area of which was entirely taken up by booths, circuses, giants and dwarfs, cheap pantomimes and ballets, boneless contortionists and the inevitable Hercules of the Fair, with his weights and clubs. There was one very droll and quite national exhibition consisting of a representation of the creation of the world from chaos to the fall of man, in which the marionettes, worked by springs into all sorts of comicalities, were the actors. Of course there were ice-mountains for tobogganing, but by far the most popular entertainments were the merry-go-rounds, which swarmed, filling every vacant place and making the days and nights hideous with the braying of discordant brass bands. But the noise and the riot were a pure delight to man, woman and child, whose shrieks of joy added pepper and salt to the great charivari. All the riff-raff of the town was gathered together, those happy ones who had a few kopecks rushing eagerly to spend them; the unfortunates who could not muster a copper quite as keen, some standing for hours knee-deep in the melting snow—for it was a dirty thaw—peering into the chinks between the boards of the theatres to try and get a peep at the glories within; others encouraging the patrons of the ice-mountains and wooden horses with approving shouts and wild applause. Making their way slowly, tortuously and with much splashing of icy slush through the seething crowd, were carriages full of middle-class folk who had come to see “all the fun of the fair,” while numbers of policemen, mounted and on foot, bawling and swearing at nothing, and for nothing, added to the din of the inferno.

Here was indeed King Carnival supreme in state. But all this was but the prelude; the crowning glory of the festival was yet to come. For what is joy without _vodka_, and what is _vodka_ unless it be drunk in sufficient quantities to drown memory and consciousness? The _mujik_ would probably endorse the five classical reasons for drinking—1. The advent of a friend. 2. You are thirsty. 3. You may be thirsty some time hence. 4. The good quality of the liquor. 5. Any other reason!

I am reminded as I write these lines that in a few days the mad week of 1915 will take place, and there will be no _vodka_! What will happen? What will my poor Mikhail do if he be yet alive?

And we! How were we spending the mad week, while the proletariat were playing high jinks on the Admiralty Place? The great folk were in what Shakespeare calls “holiday humour,” no less than the small, and they too were bent on making the most of the last merriment that the Church would allow till the long spell of Lenten sadness should be past; and this they achieved by turning day into night. By one o’clock in the afternoon we had to array ourselves in evening dress to go and eat _blinni_ at one or another of our kind friends’ hospitable houses. _Blinni_ are a sort of scone, a cross between a pancake and a crumpet, eaten with fresh butter and caviare, a very tempting form of food. After feasting upon _blinni_ comes dancing, generally a regular ball, with cotillon and mazurka complete. Then dressing for dinner, two or three parties and at least one ball. All business at a standstill, nothing but pleasure, more pleasure and yet again pleasure. By the end of the week the world seemed a little limp, and I think we all realized that “surfeit is the father of much fast.”[46]

It was not very often that the men of letters made an appearance in the society of St. Petersburg. I was all the more interested when one evening Lord Napier invited a few of them to dinner at the Embassy; amongst them was Turgenieff, the famous author—a tall, strikingly handsome man with grey hair—altogether a commanding figure. I was much disappointed at not being able to hear him talk, but I was placed a long way from him, and as he left immediately after dinner, I had no opportunity of speaking with him. I sat next to M. Novikoff, an official of high position, who was very communicative.

The conversation round us turned upon the colonizing policy of the old Romans, with whom M. Novikoff found great fault, saying how foolish it was of them to punish as a crime any attempt on the part of the conquered tribes to regain their liberty. Such attempts, according to him, might be treated as acts of war, but not visited with the severity merited by treason. I could not help hinting to M. Novikoff that the policy which he so strongly condemned in the Romans was something uncommonly like, or even identical with, that of Russia in Poland. M. Novikoff became very much confused and changed the subject to that of the liberation of the serfs. In this connection he talked of M. Valouieff, the responsible minister, in terms of contempt, which quite took me by surprise. I ventured to ask whether M. Valouieff was not held to be a man of great talent. His answer was characteristic: “Mon Dieu, oui! puisque l’Empereur l’a voulu.”

The chronicling of the small beer of parties is but poor stuff; and yet there was one party which to me meant very strong ale indeed, and so I am fain to write of it even after fifty years. One evening M. Jean Tolstoy sent out about thirty invitations for a very small gathering, myself among the number, to meet the Tsar, and listen to music. As the Emperor was expected, I of course retired into the background, deeming that he would only wish to speak to the _gros bonnets_; however, when M. Tolstoy led him into the room he gave a look round, and seeing me, to the amazement, not to say petrifaction, of the mighty, he came striding up to me, shook hands and began talking in Russian, saying that he heard that I was learning his language. I bowed—and he went on speaking.

_From a sketch by Zichy._]

For a few minutes we conversed in Russian, and then, after paying me many compliments, to my relief he changed to French. He asked me a great many questions in connection with my new study—did I not find it very difficult? What language did I think it most resembled? I told him that I thought there was similarity with none so far as I knew, except as regarded Aryan roots, but that there were more grammatical analogies with Greek than with any other language of which I had any knowledge. He agreed, and that led him to speak of Latin, reminding me of what I had said to him at my presentation about the public orator’s speech at Oxford, at whose expense he once more laughed heartily. He spoke for some little time about life at the University and the beauty of Oxford, which seemed to have interested him greatly, and after a very pleasant talk, went on to speak to some of the other guests. Any mark of the Emperor’s condescension was sure to make a great sensation at St. Petersburg, and for twenty-four hours I was quite a hero. “On dit que l’Empereur a causé avec vous en Russe—vous devez en être joliment fier!” That was the gist of what everyone whom I met the next day said to me. I should have been even less or more than human if I had not felt flattered and proud.

One evening Lady Napier, who had rather broken down after the trials of the winter and was soon going to Germany for a rest and change, invited a few of the diplomats and other friends to a small farewell rout. Belloli, the painter, had just sent home a portrait of her which was much praised. General Cassius Clay, after looking at it thoughtfully for a few moments and then at her, said: “I guess, Ma’am, you was ruddier when that was done.” Our much-loved ambassadress certainly was looking a little pale, and tired; but the good General probably never heard the old saying, “Toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire.” The Duc d’Osuna was even more droll. His criticism of the portrait was: “Oui, c’est zoli—c’est même très bien; mais le portrait qu’il a fait de moi est bien plus zoli!” He was such a dear little man, and so kindly, that one loved him just as he was with his weaknesses and small vanities, which hurt nobody; everyone laughed, and nobody would have wished him otherwise.

At Prince Gortchakoff’s on the 18th we heard the news of the storming and capture of Düppel. The Prince’s remark to the Prussian _chargé d’affaires_ on getting the telegram was, “J’espère enfin que c’est la paix!” He did not seem to think that the united forces of Austria and Prussia combined had much to boast of in having beaten unassisted Denmark.

Baron Plessen, the Danish Minister at St. Petersburg, was a man of great ability, calm, just and moderate in his views. One day he talked to me for a long time about the war and the causes which led to it. The pith of his remarks is worth transcribing. “If France and England had been able to agree upon this affair the war might have been prevented. Russia would not have remained idle, and it is known to which side her sympathies lean. But France and England could not agree. Meanwhile England has been perpetually making apparent advances towards action which have encouraged the Danes to prolong their obstinate resistance. The Danes at Copenhagen see matters far differently from us, who, calmly and at a distance, can weigh the truth of reports and judge of the exact bearing of protests and propositions. At Copenhagen the public mind is so inflamed that a mere piece of newspaper tittle-tattle is enough to convince men that England and France will actually send a fleet to the Baltic, and this it is which caused the Danes so stubbornly to refuse an armistice which would have saved Düppel and spared thousands of lives. But with the best intentions, England has been a bad friend to Denmark, for she has raised expectations which she could not realize. Even if she had determined upon helping Denmark, she could not have spared an adequate land force.

“As for Sweden, she promised her twenty thousand men and did not send them; but if she had performed her promises, the Germans would have called in forty thousand troops, and she would have been of no use. Besides, it must be admitted that the dismemberment of Denmark would never be really displeasing to Sweden, who has always had an eye upon the islands.... England has throughout treated Germany with too little respect—she thought that she had only to speak to be obeyed. But the Germans are strong, and too proud to bear dictation.”

Obviously Baron Plessen disapproved of the action of his Government in “prolonging their obstinate resistance” at the bidding of the Copenhagen mob, whom they feared; and much as I admired the gallant defence of Düppel, I could not help sharing his view. But the important point for us in what he said lay in his remarks about the fast-and-loose policy for which Lord Russell was responsible, and the wavering encouragement without which the Danes might “have saved Düppel and spared thousands of lives.” That unstable swinging of the pendulum was a blame which no special pleading could remove. And what it cost! And what it is costing now, fifty-one years later!

April 22nd (10th).—Until this morning there was no sign of the breaking up of the Neva. The weather for some days had been beautiful, the nights lovely, and nowhere can the entrancing splendour of moonlight and starlight be seen to greater advantage than in this city of gold and silver spires. How poor Whistler would have revelled in it! One night, in addition to the usual glories of the darkness, there was a perfect lunar rainbow bent by the fairies over the Isaac’s Cathedral. But of spring no faintest message. All at once my servant came running in with the news that the river was moving. I hurried out to the embankment, and found all the world and his wife there, watching the welcome wonder. It seemed as if no one could stay at home and miss the great sight of the year.

For many days the ice of the solid river had been quite black, but now it had turned white again, and was slowly, almost imperceptibly, drifting seaward. Gradually yawning clefts showed themselves and the huge mass was split into great blocks. Then the rush of the river began in earnest; deserted hayboats, looking picturesquely gloomy against the dazzling ice and sky, came floating down the stream, to be dashed into a thousand splinters against the permanent bridges. A few unhappy dogs which had been unwarily disporting themselves upon the river while it was yet unbroken were unable to make their escape, and were carried away to the Baltic on the iceblocks, howling piteously. It was impossible to leave the crowded quay while the sight lasted, and at night the effect was even more fascinating; the moonlit steeples and towers, reflected a myriad-fold on the facets of the ice, made the strange beauty of a scene which, even upon the Russians, does not pall.

The following morning at a little before ten o’clock the thunder peals from the guns of the fortress announced that the ceremony of crossing the water had begun. Every year, as soon as the river is free of the danger of the larger masses of what are miniature icebergs, the Commandant of the Fortress is rowed over in state to the Winter Palace to carry to the Emperor a goblet of Neva water. His Majesty in return fills the cup with gold pieces—a perquisite of the Commandant. These cunning officers used to take care to procure the largest vessel that could be found, until at last the abuse was stopped and a fixed measure adopted for the ceremony.

No boat may cross the river before the Commandant, but he is followed by quite a little fleet of river craft manned by _mujiks_ in their different-coloured shirts, on a bright morning a picturesquely quaint sight. Salvos of artillery; curiously-shaped and many-coloured boats; guards presenting arms; the rays of the sun turning the ice-blocks into gigantic opals; the crowds watching on the quays; the golden steeples all ablaze with light; drums rattling and trumpets blaring; flags flying from every window! After this fashion Russia celebrates the funeral rites of the winter, the baptism of the spring.

* * * * *

When the Almighty first set his bow in the cloud it was not more welcome than the arrival of Palm Sunday to the starving Russian. It does not make an end of the sorrows of Lent, but it comes laden with hope: the austere and hungry days are numbered, and the beginning of a series of sublime ceremonials brings with it the buds of a new joy which will burst into life with the dawn of the paschal feast.

Very solemn are the observances of the Holy Week in the Greek Church. The liturgies are grand, imposing, soul-stirring; their music so compelling and emotional that they bring home to one the strength of Tolstoy’s great saying, “Le sentiment religieux est après tout indispensable.”

As a race, judging by the way in which we face our religion, we Britons are, I suppose, an unemotional people. With us ritual is a question of the individual; to one man a stimulus, to his neighbour a horror. In Russia, on the contrary, it seems to be a national necessity, satisfying an endemic craving; to the lower orders, indeed, the be-all and end-all of religion: not, as I think I have already shown, a religion necessarily acting as a high moral force or even as a deterrent, but in some mystic way a spiritual comfort in the present, as it is in the future the promise of the wiping out of all crime and salvation by virtue of the great Sacrifice. For the Slav the call to the soul must be through the imagination, and that is where the imagery of the Greek Church triumphs. A highly symbolical ritual is of the very essence of the orthodox faith, and since ritual there must be, where could you find it more reverent, more devotional, more suggestive of the Divine Mystery, than in the services of these last days of Lent? The music breathes tragedy; the swelling voices of the choristers rise from the lowest depth of sorrow to the sublimest heights of ecstatic adoration; the canticles and antiphons are so entirely one with the rites of the Passion that I imagined that this heaven-born music must be as old as the liturgies themselves, foreshadowing Wagner’s theory of the twin-birth of music and poetry. But that is not so. I was informed that it is no older than the eighteenth century. Could it, I wonder, have been based upon some much more ancient model? It is difficult to conceive these services without the solemn chanting of the priests which is of their very essence.

Palm Sunday Eve is one of the holiest of the anniversaries observed by the Greek Church; none is more pregnant with symbolism. Prince Gortchakoff, always kind, invited me to attend the evening service in his chapel. It was a singularly impressive ceremonial, not, of course, so steeped in tragic emotion as those which would follow later in the week, for symbolically we were celebrating a joy, not a death—the triumphant procession when the people shouted, Hosanna to the Son of David, welcoming with loud acclaim the entry of their King into His capital, “coming in the name of the Lord.”

The first striking feature of the holy rite was the bringing in of a small table upon which were set out vessels containing oil, wine, grain and five loaves typifying the five barley loaves with which the Saviour fed the five thousand in the desert place near Bethsaida. Very reverently these were blessed by the priest, who at the same time offered up a prayer to God that oil and wine and grain might not fail His people during the ensuing year.

The great moment was when the palm branches were produced, carried in a huge pot to be blessed, sprinkled with holy water, and incensed with the fumes of consecrated spices and gums. To each of the congregation a taper was given by an attendant, and one of the newly-blessed palm branches was handed by the officiating priest to each of us. The priest then entered the Holy of Holies, _Sviataia Sviatuich_, by the Doors of the Lord, and we symbolically followed the Son of David on his royal progress. The Gospel was read, the blessing delivered, and the service, which had lasted two hours, during which we remained standing, was at an end.

None but a consecrated priest may cross the threshold of the Doors of the Lord or enter the _Sviataia Sviatuich_. The crazy Emperor Paul once received a just rebuke from the Metropolitan for wishing to break this law. The Emperor stands much in the same relation to the Orthodox Church in Russia as the King of England does to our Church. He is the Head, that is, the eldest son, of the Church, but he cannot officiate or even vote in the Synod. The Emperor Paul, however, wished, as Head of the Church, himself to conduct the service. Full of religious ardour, he arrived one day by the side door of the altar, and was received by the Metropolitan. The Tsar called for priest’s robes, announced his intention of celebrating the Mass, and prepared to enter the Holy of Holies, when, just as he was about to pass the threshold of the Doors of the Lord, the prelate stood before him, barring the way, and said,“Kneel, sire! This is your place. You may go no further.” The Emperor, to do him justice, took the reprimand well, and the Metropolitan did not suffer for his bold speech. This story is not recorded in history—it is not likely to be; but it was told me by a Russian gentleman of high position, and is a matter of common knowledge.

On the Thursday in Passion Week there is a very interesting ceremony: the washing of the feet of twelve priests in the Isaac’s Cathedral. I had been misinformed as to the time, and so unfortunately missed it.

In a Church in whose offices emotion plays so intense—if it did not savour of impiety one would be tempted to say so dramatic—a part, Good Friday must inevitably be celebrated by ceremonies imaging the blackest woe. Nowhere is the tragedy of the Cross represented with so much realism—a realism that might easily have degenerated into something shocking, were it not so hallowed by a veneration born of the Divine Love which said, “This do in remembrance of Me.” It is hardly too much to say that on this day the orthodox Christian lives through the whole awful tragedy now nearly two thousand years old. No other man sees it so vividly before his eyes.

In the morning, torn by sorrow, he takes down the Body of the Saviour from the Cross, and with as much reverence as if it were a real corpse, lays it in a lighted funeral chapel to await the burial service of the evening. This I was allowed to witness in the Imperial Chapel of the Winter Palace. The service began with a Mass. The priests, of whom there were four besides the arch-priest, the deacons, readers and choir, were all in deep mourning; the latter in a sort of Court dress, with swords, the clergy in vestments of black velvet and silver. The Mass was, as I was told, performed after the traditions of the worship of the early Christians in the catacombs. In the centre of the church was the bier, covered with a cloth representing an effigy of the dead Saviour, with the Gospel on the breast as at a funeral.

Indeed, the whole ceremony is a solemn funeral service. During the Mass every person present was presented with a lighted wax taper, and the bier was surrounded by magnificent candelabra carrying wax lights. As soon as the Mass was over, the choir drew themselves up in triple row behind the priests, who stood on each side of the bier, the arch-priest in the centre, with two deacons supporting him, facing the altar. Then arose the funeral dirge, sung by about fifty fine voices, very soft and still, the basses especially making a fine effect—all the music unaccompanied. At the end of the funeral chant the key changed, and there followed a louder canticle. The priests, one at each corner, and the chief priest in the middle, raised the bier upon their heads and carried it round the church, the whole congregation kneeling and touching the ground with their foreheads while they devoutly crossed themselves. The bier having been replaced and the choir having taken up their former position, the deacon thundered out the _Ektenia_, a litany in which the choir made the responses “Gospodi pomilui” (“Lord, have mercy!”).

After this the deacon read a short passage from one of the epistles, and went into the Holy of Holies to fetch the Gospel, which he presented with a reverence to the chief priest, who read a portion of the Scripture and delivered a blessing.

The Gospel having been taken back into the _Sviataia Sviatuich_, the chief priest fell upon his knees and made two low obeisances, each time touching the floor with his forehead; drawing near to the bier, he kissed the head and feet of the image and the book of the Gospels which lay upon the breast, and retired with a third obeisance. Two by two, the other priests followed his example, each, as he retired, bowing to the chief priest and to his colleague. Next the deacons, and after them the congregation, beginning with the ladies present, went through the same reverent formalities, and the ceremony was at an end.

No description, at least none of which I am the master, can convey an adequate idea of the solemnity and impressive grandeur of this rite. I can but set down what I saw. Let each man fill in the colouring for himself; the trappings of woe; the hushed voices of the dirge; the thunder-peals of the deacon in the _Ektenia_; the choking emotion of the celebrants; the burial of the dead Christ!

More precious than all the gold and jewels and ornaments with which the piety of potentates has enriched the Imperial chapels are two relics which are held in great veneration: the hand of St. John the Baptist, and the portrait of the Blessed Virgin painted by St. Luke. The hand of the Baptist was a present given by the Head of the Order of the Knights of Malta to the Emperor Paul. Of the picture by St. Luke I had but a very hazy sight. I should have liked to have held it in my hand, or at any rate, to have been allowed a close inspection of it. No doubt I might have obtained that favour for the asking, but I did not like to risk being considered indiscreet. As it was, I could see nothing but a gorgeous frame with a golden crown and precious stones such as adorn all the sacred pictures of the Church. Dim with age, the picture itself at the distance at which I saw it was a cloud.

I wonder how much money was spent in St. Petersburg on Saturday, April 18th (30th), being Easter Eve. It is a great day for buying and selling, and the market is so beset by crowds of eager customers, keenly bent on buying the wherewithal to break the long fast which ends at midnight, that the mounted police have to muster in force in order to preserve some semblance of order. Shortly before midnight on Easter Eve the town was illuminated by candles placed at intervals along the pavement, the guns of the fortress began to crash out their joy-signals, and the pious folk flocked to the churches to hear the priest give out the glorious news of the resurrection of the Saviour.

The celebration of Easter at the Isaac’s Cathedral is said to be quite magnificent; but I did not see it, for I was bidden to keep the feast at Princess Kotchoubey’s and I could not refuse, as she had always been so kind to me. The service of a chapel in a private house, however grand it may be, can never come up to the gorgeous spectacle such as that of the great procession which thrice marches round the colossal building. Still the ceremony was very imposing, and the entertainment afterwards, as always where the Princess is hostess, sumptuous in the extreme.

In the streets the night which heralds Easter is a mad jubilee. Everybody salutes everybody else with the joyful cry, first uttered by the priest in church, “Christos Voskres” (“Christ has arisen”), and everybody answers “Dieistvelno on Voskres” (“Of a truth He has arisen”). By four o’clock in the morning the proletariat is very drunk and very happy. The noise and the shouting and the merriment might be in honour of a great victory, as indeed it is—the Divine victory over death!

By dawn the booths and merry-go-rounds of the Butter Week have sprung up like mushrooms in an August night, and all through Easter Sunday the cry of “Christos Voskres” will be dinning in our ears. As for the poor Emperor, the twenty-four hours were enough to tire him out. Think of having to kiss from seven to eight hundred people directly after midnight; and then to begin again with deputations from each of the regiments of the Guards after breakfast! The Empress had to plead her poor health in order to escape from the fatigue of these receptions. I sometimes thought that it must need the strength of a Samson to bear the weight of duty that is laid upon a Russian Emperor. Alexander the Second carried himself nobly and equably through the weary rites and ceremonies that are the heritage of Tsardom’s woe; but what a strain it must often have been!

* * * * *

After the long weeks of fasting and the ten wild days of feast and revelry, St. Petersburg began to calm down and the world, high and low, was at peace.

* * * * *

May 4.—A storm of indignation was raised by the arrival of the _Indépendance Belge_ with the report of a speech delivered by Pope Pius IX. in the Consistory upon the occasion of a canonization. His Holiness, while in the same breath disclaiming any intention of fomenting revolt or of encouraging treason, made a furious attack upon the Tsar for his policy in Poland. He accused him of endeavouring to uproot the Roman Catholic religion, of exciting rebellion under the pretence of quelling it, of transporting whole populations to frozen and desolate regions, and of removing bishops from the functions to which the Church had called them. There is nothing so dangerous, nothing so misleading as falsehood with a thin veneer of truth. No one can deny that great numbers of Poles had been deported; but many, if not most, of them had been sent to Samara, a province in the south-east of European Russia, rich in that famous black earth which makes a farmers’ paradise, in which numbers of prosperous German colonists were doing a thriving trade in wheat, tobacco, cattle and horses, while even those who were sent to Siberia were described to me by an Englishman who had just come from there as quite happy and comfortably established with their families. Siberia is by no means the cruel country about which such terrible tales have been served up for European consumption, dressed with all the condiments of fanatic hatred.

Even Dostoievski—no friend to the Russian Government—when writing against the prison system of Siberia, to which he was sent for political reasons, speaks almost with affection of the country itself. It was the life of the criminal convict in Siberia which was such a nightmare, and with that the transported Poles had nothing to do. But Siberia was always a good name of terror, and as such the Pope made rhetorical capital of it. As regards the question of uprooting the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, there can be no doubt that the Greek Church has always been very intolerant. There was indeed a time—in the Middle Ages—when the followers of other creeds were not looked upon as Christians; the Russian chroniclers called the Roman Catholics “unbaptized Latins,” holding that there could be no baptism without total immersion; and when the Tsar received ambassadors it was customary for him to give them his hand, but in the audience hall there was kept a golden vessel in which the autocrat might wash off the contamination.

Though these prejudices were dead and matters of history, the hatred which inspired them was very much alive, and the fighting in Poland was in a great measure a war of religion. Still it was simply an invention of the priests, wishful to keep up the spirit of rebellion, to say that there was any desire on the part of the Government to extirpate their faith.

The Polish peasants, who were as ignorant as their own cattle, were told by the priests that the worship of God according to the Catholic creed was forbidden in Russia, and that persons who died in that communion were refused Christian burial, and thrown out into the forests and wastes to rot or be devoured by the wolves. In order to disabuse the Poles of these ideas, the deputation of peasants of whom I have already spoken were taken to Mass in the great Romish church and also to visit the Roman Catholic burial ground. Seeing, it was hoped, would be believing.

In official life both Roman Catholics and Lutherans have held high places. Curiously enough Count Nesselrode, the famous Chancellor, was a member of the Church of England, having been baptized on board a British man-of-war, and till his death he remained a faithful son of our creed. Count Creptovitch, who was formerly Minister in England, and whom I knew well, was a Roman Catholic, and held a great position. Many others could be named. But would Count Creptovitch, a devout Roman Catholic, have given the support of his great name to a Government pledged to the extirpation of his communion from any part of the Empire? The thing was absurd and incredible on the face of it.

Of the third accusation brought by Pope Pius—that of the removal of the bishops—it was not difficult to dispose. The Archbishop of Warsaw and the Bishop of Vilna had been politically very troublesome—not a matter of infrequent occurrence among the soldiers of a very militant Church. They were requested to leave their sees until matters should have settled down, and they had not much to complain of. They were extricated without any loss of dignity from a very difficult position and were allowed to retain all their honours, titles and emoluments, a slight deduction being made from the latter to cover certain expenses which were a liability of their offices; and there seemed no reason to preclude their return in happier and more peaceful times once more to take possession of the charge of their flocks.

The Pope’s speech was certainly injudicious and ill-timed. His Holiness had evidently been misinformed; zeal had, not for the first time in the world’s history, outrun truth.

* * * * *

May the 9th.—I suppose that there could hardly be a more magnificent military spectacle than that of the Spring Parade held on the Champ de Mars. The Empress and all the great people of St. Petersburg were present in a grand stand, by which a little ragged cur had taken up his position and, sitting upright on his tail, watched the proceedings as a rather captious critic from beginning to end, moving his head from side to side with unflagging interest. When the Emperor rode on to the ground surrounded by his brilliant staff of generals and aides-de-camp, he passed in front of each corps and to each he addressed the question, “Are you well, my children?” and the men thundered out, “We wish you health!” When the march past began, the Tsar signified his approbation of each squadron or battalion, and the men roared with one voice, “Glad to do our best.” There were thirty-two thousand men in all, under the orders of the Grand Duke Nicholas[47]—a noble-looking host, as gorgeous as glittering uniforms could make them. At the head of the other troops, the mail-clad Circassian body-guard, dashing past at a gallop, some of them throwing down their scimitars in front of them and heeling over to pick them up again at the saluting-point, made a gallant and fantastic show, with just a touch of Asian mystery to add a glamour of the East to the picture.

The cavalry of the Guard, splendidly mounted, with their cuirasses and helmets flaming in the sunshine; the pennons of the lancers; the infantry; the artillery; all spick and span, showed off the panoply of war in its most attractive shape—altogether a dazzling pageant. Whether it was anything more than that one witness seemed to doubt, for when the last man had marched past and the Emperor turned to leave the ground, the little dog got up, stretched himself, yawned and proceeded to mark his contempt of the whole proceedings in the most accentuated fashion. One Russian gentleman, a statesman in a very high position, told me that it had been his custom for years to attend this annual review, wondering at its stateliness, and that his pride used to rise in hero-worship when he thought of the invincibility of these glorious warriors.

The Alma and Inkermann shook him in his faith, and since then he had left off his yearly visit to the Champ de Mars; there was “trop de clinquant et trop peu de réalité.” He agreed with the little dog.

One thing struck even my unskilled civilian eye: as the artillery came rattling under a window in the British Embassy, which looked on to the parade ground, I noticed that no two batteries were armed with the same pattern of gun. I could not help wondering what would be the effect of this in action; whether there was not great risk of mistakes in the serving out of ammunition, and other conceivable causes of confusion.

That evening at dinner at the Club Anglais[48] I chanced to sit next to a general officer with whom I was acquainted, and I asked him what was the reason of this difference in the equipment of the various batteries. His answer was that the great authorities on artillery had not yet come to a conclusion as to what was the best service gun, so Russia was biding her time and allowing the other armies to make experiments for her benefit.

It so happened, however, that I knew of six or more agents for different gun factories in England, France, and Germany, who were staying in St. Petersburg with well-filled pouches touting for their several firms; and this had been going on for months; so the Russian gunners had to deal with weapons of many patterns, the efficiency of the army being made of no account so long as those pouches continued to empty themselves and bulge once more. This was a point upon which the Embassies were better informed than the ministers of the Emperor.