First came the clergy in gorgeous palls, carrying candles and incense burners, chanting funeral songs. The coffin was drawn on sleighs. Behind it walked the Privy Councillor Tolstoi carrying a crown set with priceless gems.
The Tsar had for the first time at this funeral prohibited the ancient Russian custom of wailing; it was strictly ordered that none should cry aloud.
All moved along in silence, the night was still, nothing was heard but the crackling of the burning resin, the crunching of steps on the snow, and the funeral chanting. This silent procession aroused a shudder of terror. It seemed as though we were gliding along the ice after the dead, ourselves also dead, into the black eternal gloom.
With this old Tsaritsa New Russia seemed to be burying Old Russia, and Petersburg burying Moscow.
The Tsarevitch, who had loved the deceased as his own mother, was terribly upset by this death. He sees in it a bad omen for himself, his own fate. Several times during the ceremony he whispered to me, “The end has come, the end of everything!”
January 1.
To-morrow morning I leave Petersburg, together with the two Barons Loewenwold for Riga, and then travel through Danzig into Germany. This is my last night in the Tsarevitch’s house.
This evening I went to bid him good-bye; the way we parted made me feel how much I love him, and that I will never forget him.
“Who knows,” said he, “we may meet again. I would like to pay another visit to Germany and other foreign countries; I liked those parts, you live in gaiety and light and freedom.”
“What holds your Highness back?”