CHAPTER XII
A GRIM BEGINNING OF A REIGN
“What are we to do now?” asked Pauline of Wilfrid, when, as their carriage drew near to the Imperial Square, they found approach to the Winter Palace impossible by reason of the dense crowd. “We can’t expect these good people to open a way for us to the front, and yet, as we are, we shall see nothing!”
Her situation at that moment contrasted singularly with that of her father. While he was within the stately palace and occupying a high place among the Imperial entourage, she was outside in the open square upon the skirts of a tumultuous swaying crowd.
Her glance, wandering around, rested upon the façade of the Hôtel de l’Etat Major, the seat of various governmental departments. Situated upon the south side of the Imperial Square, its front, nearly two furlongs in length, sweeps round in a magnificent arc, and faces the south side of the Winter Palace. The windows and balconies of this vast edifice were occupied by groups of well-dressed men and women, whose elevated position gave them a good view of all that was going on.
“That’s where we’ll go,” said Pauline, glancing up at one of these windows.
She drove up to the chief entrance of the hotel, and, being well known to those in authority there, soon obtained for herself and Wilfrid a place among a little group upon one of the upper balconies.
As Wilfrid gazed downwards it seemed to him that all the city’s five hundred thousand inhabitants must be gathered together in the space fronting the Winter Palace. They were prevented from getting too near the Imperial edifice by serried ranks of cavalry and infantry, whose numbers were being increased minute by minute.
Wilfrid, with his semi-military tastes, took pleasure in watching the advent of the various regiments that from different points kept continually debouching into the square. Ever and anon from some new quarter the rolling of drums and the wild strains of martial music heralded the approach of some fresh band, till it seemed that not only must all the civilian population of St. Petersburg be there, but the whole of the Czar’s vast army as well.
And the variety and oddity of the uniforms!
Circassians were there, whose burnished helmets with steel veil falling upon the shoulder, shirts of linked mail, and long lances, seemed to recall the days of mediæval chivalry; Polish heydukes, whose upper lips were adorned by triple moustaches, the first twisted upwards, the second quite straight, and the third twisted downwards; Zaporogian Cossacks, whose trousers were smeared with tar to show the wearer’s contempt for the costly scarlet cloth of which they were composed.