Then she took leave of us all. She gave me her blessing like a mother.
The Tsarevitch did not leave her. His face was terrible to look at. He fainted three times. She did not talk to him; it almost seemed that she did not recognise him. Only just before all was over, when he pressed her hand to his lips, she looked at him with a long look, and said something in a low voice. All I could hear was:—
“Soon, soon we shall see each other again!”
She died as if she had fallen asleep. The dead face expressed more happiness than it had ever shown in her lifetime.
By the Tsar’s order a post mortem examination was made, he himself being present.
The funeral was fixed for October 27th. There was a long discussion whether the rank of a Crown Princess demanded cannon to be fired at her funeral; if so, how many guns to the salute. All the foreign ambassadors were questioned on the subject. The Tsar troubled himself more about this cannonade than he had ever troubled himself about the lot of her Highness when alive. It was decided not to fire.
The coffin was borne along a narrow bridge constructed on purpose, from the house to the Neva. The Tsar and Tsarevitch walked behind the coffin. The Tsaritsa was not present—she hourly expected her delivery. A mourning frigate stood waiting on the Neva; it was draped with black, and black standards were hoisted on it. Slowly to the sounds of funeral music, the ship bore us towards the Peter and Paul Cathedral, not yet completed, where the grave of the Crown Princess had to remain under the open sky until the closing of the vaulted roof. The sky wept over her when alive; it will rain on her when dead.
The evening was dull and calm, the sky seemed like the vault of a grave; the Neva, a dark gloomy mirror. The town, wrapped in mist appeared like a phantom or nightmare. All I had experienced, seen, and heard in this dreadful city, now, more than ever, seemed to me as a dream.
From the cathedral we returned at night to the house of the Tsarevitch, for a commemoration banquet. Here the Tsar handed a letter to his son; I learnt later that he threatened to disinherit and curse him unless he reformed.