CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST PARLIAMENT
The 10th of May had long been announced as the official birthday of Russian freedom, but every one was astonished when the birth actually took place, and the officials were the most astonished of all. Stars and omens were unpropitious. The astrologers muttered of a secret and violent influence, already blighting the future hope before it breathed. At the door was sitting an obscure and gigantic form with hands ready to throttle its earliest cry; and in the heavens, Orion’s sword, with point directed at the house of birth, was seen hanging by a single hair.
It required no divination to prophesy evil. Every art of provocation had been used by the pensioners of violence to arouse a popular outbreak, so that in the name of order the people’s hopes might again be thwarted. Martial law was maintained, and meetings were suppressed. Only on the Tuesday night before the fateful Thursday, I visited the hall of the Free Economic Society for old acquaintance’ sake, because the Strike Committee used to meet there, and sat among a peaceful audience of Constitutional Democrats and peasant members of the Duma, listening to a statistical discourse on the agrarian question. Suddenly a measured tramp was heard outside, thirty armed police forced their way into the crowded hall, and their officer declared the meeting closed. White-haired Annensky, the club’s aged President, famous equally for learning and imprisonment, vainly recited the Society’s statute of freedom, granted by Catherine II. herself. Speakers and audience, Members of Parliament, men and women alike, were driven out into the street, and in the name of the law we were commanded to learn nothing further about the comparative statistics of agricultural productivity.
The change of Ministry during the previous week was claimed as an advantage by both sides. The removal of Witte and Durnovo simultaneously at least made the assembly of the Duma possible, and the appointment of Goremykin as Premier was greeted even by many Liberals as a harmless and natural thing, just as in England it is harmless and natural to make a lord chairman of an agricultural show. On the other hand, it was seen that the new Ministers as a body belonged to the familiar old gang of bureaucrats, trained in the routine of officialdom, and untouched by the realities of wider life. Finally, the publication of the new version of “Fundamental Laws” only three days before the Duma met was clear evidence that the party of reaction still controlled the hesitating Tsar; for as long as those Fundamental Laws remained above change and above discussion, the power promised to the people—the power that we call freedom—must inevitably continue ineffectual as an infant spirit in limbo.
So the omens of freedom’s birth were dark; but omens are usually dark in Russia, and when the expected morning came, the church bells set up a famous clanging, and the beautiful city of St. Petersburg woke light-hearted as usual in the midst of her perils. For the security of the despotism every precaution had been taken. The palace arrangements had been made by Trepoff himself, whose influence in the Imperial household remained unabated. The deep and brilliant river ran silent and empty of traffic, while up its course the Tsar was spirited back to the city which had not known him since Bloody Sunday. All the approaches to the Winter Palace were barred from dawn. The two nearest bridges over the Neva were closed. Troops were drawn across the neighbouring streets. Bodies of variegated Cossacks and Guards, their horses bright with scarlet cloths, stood patient for hours upon the vast and stony square before the palace doors. No common eye might gain a glimpse of the glory to be revealed. No cabman brought a duke without displaying a special green ticket in his hat. For days before, the most elaborate system of coupons and signatures and photographs for identification had been organized with infinite effort to prevent any dreadful occurrence. Yet when the moment came, no one consulted the nice photographs with which I had freely supplied the palace, and I walked in far more easily than its owner. I have often noticed that despotism affords these little advantages over decent government.
As the scene of the day’s first ceremony, Trepoff had chosen the large Coronation Hall, constructed with columns of genuine marble—so few things are genuine in these palaces—and decorated with gold and crimson hideousness, to which all Emperors are obliged to grow accustomed. At the end of the hall, upon a few low steps, stood a rather old gilded throne. Over it was thrown a robe of ermine and yellow stuff in studied negligence, and round it stood four little gilded camp-stools. A praying-desk and a table, both covered with gold cloth, were placed in the middle of the inlaid floor, and some priests or deacons carried in the miraculous Icon, representing the head of Christ, from the little old palace of Peter the Great. But when they had set it on the praying-desk they found it was so dusty, or had been so much kissed of late, that they had to spend the leisure time in polishing it up with a fairly clean handkerchief. Beside them was presently drawn up a choir of men and boys, all dressed in long cassocks of crimson and gold to match the furniture.
Meantime the new State Council (or Council of Empire) had begun to arrive and gather on the low platform constructed down the side of the hall to the right of the throne. Senators also came in brilliant scarlet and gold, past and present Ministers with long beds of gold-lace flowers and foliage down their coats, a whole school of admirals (if one may borrow a marine phrase from the porpoise), a radiant company of Field Marshals and generals in blue or white cloth with gold or silver facings and enormous epaulettes, and the members of the Holy Synod in the panoply of holiness. Soon the entire platform was full of uniforms, and on the breast of each uniform gleamed stars and crosses and medals, a few of which were gained by service in foreign or civil war. Sometimes one could only hope that the hero would live to win no more distinction, since there was no more room for orders, so great had been the wisdom or courage of the heart that beat below.
By some mistake, three peasant deputies, in high top-boots, with leather belts round their long Sunday coats, entered among all this brilliance, contemplated it as though working out its value in grain, and then were hurriedly conducted away by a being with a queer gold crook. But they were only a few minutes wrong in the programme, for directly afterwards all the Duma members came trooping in—sturdy peasants in homespun cloth, one Little Russian in brilliant purple with broad blue breeches, one Lithuanian Catholic bishop in violet robes, three Tartar Mullahs with turbans and long grey cassocks, a Balkan peasant in white embroidered coat, four Orthodox monks with shaggy hair, a few ordinary gentlemen in evening dress, and the vast body of the elected in the clothes of every day.
All down the left side of the hall they ranged themselves, about four hundred and sixty of them altogether; for, at the last moment, all had consented to come, though many of the peasants and Constitutional Democrats had threatened to stay away, in protest against the Fundamental Laws. There they stood, confronting the brilliant crowd across the polished floor, and it was easy to see in them the symbol of the new age which now confronts the old and is about to devour it. Shining with decorations and elaborately dressed in many colours, on the one side were the classes who so long have drained the life of the great nation they have brought to the edge of ruin. Pale, bald, and fat, they stood there like a hideous masquerade of senile children, hardly able to realize the possibility of change. But opposite to them thronged the people—young, thin, alert, and sunburnt, with brown and hairy heads, dressed like common mankind, and straining for the future chance.
In that sharp contrast between obsolete failure and coming hope lay the only significance of that palatial scene, unless a dim significance still lurked in the dozen Byzantine bishops and metropolitans, who, in stiff gold and domed mitres, tottered up the space between the confronting ages, and embraced each other’s hoary beards with holy kisses. They had hardly been brought into line before the altar when a sudden hush was felt by all, and far away was heard the melancholy and beautiful Russian Hymn. It heralded the approach of the regalia, and presently there entered the golden sceptre and the golden orb, the seal of bronze, and the diamond crown, each reposing upon a velvet cushion and escorted by golden staves and the flag of Empire and the big gilt sword. Then at last I discovered the purpose of those four gilded camp-stools round the throne. I had hoped to see one of the Tsar’s four little daughters seated on each, but they served only as resting-places for the majestic toys of kings.