And so the baser nature within her triumphs, and the better nature dies; crushed out by passions too consuming to bear contradiction. Alas, poor Olga! So to her has come the lesson, that not even the fairest charms of woman's beauty and purity can bind the constancy of one, who, knowing his legal rights secure, scorns to keep them intact, and throws fidelity to the winds in the indulgence of the moment.
Well may the old despairing cry break from her in her splendour and loneliness, as she thinks of the time when Vladimir loved her, and her faith and trust in him were still unbroken:
"Eheu fugaces! Postume, Postume! Oh, for the days that are lost to me, lost to me!"
Brilliant indeed was the scene within the Onyx Hall, of the Winter Palace, on that New Year's night, the morning of which had seen the completion of Ivor Tolskoi's highest hopes. The bride and her husband were already far on their way towards those vast possessions on the Ural frontier, of which Ivor was so justly proud; but the time-honoured ceremonies of the festa were no less gay and joyous because shorn of Olga's fair presence.
The great Onyx Hall was filled with guests, awaiting the magic signal, gathered together in groups, chatting, laughing, intriguing, while ever nearer and nearer the hands on the dial of the large gold incrusted clock, standing at one end of the apartment, crept on to the hour of midnight. Suddenly a single stroke from the great bells of Isaac's Church, rang out, and a hush fell upon the waiting assembly; the clock chimed deep and full—twelve slow notes, whose dying echoes were caught up and thundered back by twelve salutes from the guns of Petropavlovsk, broken here and there by the triumphant strains, "How glorious is our Lord in Zion!" And as these died away the cathedral chimes broke forth in resonant glad music.
Simultaneously the folding doors at the top of the great hall were thrown open, and the Tsar entered, with the Empress leaning on his arm, and followed by the Imperial family. Passing down between the double lines of the Preobrashensky Grenadiers, and the Semenoffskoie Guards, drawn up on either side, his Majesty walked up to the chief actor in this brilliant pageant, and, halting before the tiny figure of the smallest cadet in the Russian army, dressed in the historical uniform of the Emperor Paul's Grenadiers, bent down over the mimic warrior and bestowed upon him the kiss of peace.
At this mark of kindly condescension the trumpets burst forth in a grand flourish, the bands struck up the spirited national air, and all the guests cried out with one accord:
"Many years to the Tsar! Health we wish your Imperial Majesty!"
And thus the first day of the New Year sinks to rest, crowned by the old but ever fresh benison, "Peace on earth, to men of good will."