"I bet you've not read about the review."
"Right you are. Hand it over."
And it repaid the trouble of reading. For it stated that each regiment of guards quartered in St. Petersburg had severally taken the oath of allegiance in the chapel of the Winter Palace. And why not, if they liked to do so? It would do the soldiers no harm. Ah, but it was to Czar Constantine that they had sworn allegiance.
"Czar Constantine? Who ever heard of a Czar Constantine?"
In the great confusion the press had entirely forgotten to officially announce the death of Czar Alexander.
"It's a slip of the pen," quoth the postmaster. "Perhaps the correspondent was drunk. Why should they not get drunk, poor devils, just once a year?"
So the matter dropped. The writer of the article in question had been celebrating his name-day too freely, had got mixed, and had written, instead of Alexander, Constantine.
In the next number, under errata, the mistake would be rectified.
But the next number brought no correction; rather the "error" was repeated twofold, threefold—all edicts being published in the name of "His Majesty Czar Constantine."
The death of Czar Alexander was never officially announced.