The spectacle had surely been in entire keeping with the ostentatious traditions of czardom, but to the most reactionary bureaucrats it was patent that the “simple peasants” had not been impressed as had been expected. They had enjoyed it—as they would have enjoyed a military manœuver. They had watched it as a passing show, and were quite at a loss as to the reason for it, or the connection between it and their business.
Many freely expressed their amazement at the gowns of the ladies. There were scores among the Duma members who had never before set eyes on grand ladies, and they could not repress their surprise at their décolleté cut. “Why did the Emperor bring us here?” asked one naïvely, “was it to show us his women?”
“I thought the Emperor’s house would be full of holy pictures,” said another sorrowfully, in the first blush of disillusionment.
“If the government tells us again that they have no money for famine, we can tell them where they might get a few copecks,” added another with a significant shake of his peasant head.
The magnificent ceremony with all its brilliant pageantry, the most gorgeous spectacle of a traditionally spectacular court, completely failed to inspire the confidence of the working-men and peasants in their olden rulers. On the contrary, it inspired amazement, discontent, and distrust.
The Czar, who is probably the greatest living genius for missing opportunities, read his empty speech—read it well, eloquently—and for the first time in his life saw face to face real men who were not fawning sycophants, and who dared express their true feelings when these were not of admiration or of approbation.
To facilitate the transportation of the Duma members from the Winter Palace to the Tauride Palace, where the sessions were to be held, they were loaded into boats and conveyed most of the way by water.
Near the Tauride Palace, looking on the river Neva, is a frowning prison in which are many political prisoners. As the boats were passing this grim place handkerchiefs began to appear, shoved out between the iron bars, and frantically waved in greeting. Across the water rang the cry of “Amnesty!” Some of the peasants who had stood stolid and unmoved through all the Winter Palace function were deeply touched by the appeals from behind the prison gratings, and not a few among them wept.
The first sitting was, of necessity, brief. There was an ecclesiastic ceremony, the administration of the oath, and the election of a president. The hum of “Amnesty” was in the air, but the demands of formal procedure would not permit of the taking hold of actual business until the president had announced himself at Peterhof—therefore amnesty, by unofficial but unanimous understanding, was scheduled for the first business of the next sitting.
But short as this session was—one hour and twenty minutes—the “first shot” was fired by the Duma when a group of bureaucratic intruders were ejected. The staunch old liberal, Petrounkevitch, climbed to the tribunal and shouted “Let freedom, liberty, and amnesty be the words of Russia’s first parliament.” The Duma echoed the words, and cries of “Liberty!” “Amnesty!” were sent ringing through the chamber.