CHAPTER VII
WILFRID DEFIES THE CZAR
“The orang-outang, confound him!” muttered Benningsen savagely, catching sight of the odd little figure. “Run, before he sees us. Quick! This way!”
“Why should I run?” demanded Wilfrid haughtily. He received no answer. Benningsen, holding his cloak over his face as if to prevent recognition, was running down a side street as fast as his legs could carry him. Wilfrid watched him in amazement.
“Afraid to face the Czar, his brother-in-law! Is the fellow an impostor, assuming the name of Benningsen for the purpose of fooling me?”
But as Wilfrid turned again he saw in a moment why Benningsen with some few others had vanished down the side streets; saw, too, why the square in front of the Michaelovski Palace had been deserted by all but the sentinels and those officials whose duty took them there.
For the truth was that even loyal Muscovites had come to regard a meeting with the Czar as little short of a calamity, since it was required by him that whenever he passed through a street all traffic must be suspended, pedestrians must cease their promenading, the occupants of vehicles must dismount, and everybody, from the serf to the boyar, must kneel bareheaded, be the wind never so cutting or the snow never so deep, till the “Little Father”—the expression is not meant to be ironic—had passed by. This practice, an old usage belonging to the barbarous days of the Empire, had been abolished by the good sense of Peter the Great; but Paul, on his accession, had revived the custom in all its rigour, so that Wilfrid, glancing along the Prospekt, saw two lines of kneeling people, some of whom even, with a servility truly Oriental, were touching the slush with their foreheads.
Close to Wilfrid was a landau from which there had alighted two ladies, the one aged and feeble, the other young and delicate, both obviously of noble blood since the panels of their carriage bore an armorial device; yet there they were, side by side with their coachmen and footmen, kneeling in the roadway upon a horrible mixture of snow and mud that chilled their limbs and stained their fur cloaks.
And woe to them and to any other person who should rise too quickly after the Czar had gone by! If detected by a backward glance of the Imperial eye it was well for the offenders if they escaped the knout or Siberia.
As Wilfrid beheld the obvious discomfort of these two ladies, a fierce anger flamed in his breast against the sovereign who required such humiliating obeisance. During all this time the regiment, marching twelve abreast, was drawing nearer to the place where Wilfrid stood.