At last we reached the room reserved for the corps diplomatique, where every one was assembled in front of the windows overlooking the Chapel erected on the Neva.
The clergy were wearing their most superb sacerdotal robes and ornaments, escorting the Emperor, the Grand Dukes and all the Court in procession. The spectacle was most imposing, rendered all the more so by the white mantle which was over all!
Presently there entered the drawing-room in which we were assembled the two Empresses and Grand Duchesses Xenia, Olga—both sisters of the Emperor—Marie Pavlovna and others dressed in their elaborate Russian Court costumes. This consists of velvet robes with round deep décolletage and long trains, and wearing on their heads the kakochnik scintillating with pearls, diamonds and other precious stones.
Some were in blue, others in pale green, bright pink, red, etc.; the ladies-in-waiting and maids-of-honour dress in the colour of the Grand Duchess, to whose court they belong.
Their trains were borne by pages from the well-known corps des pages.
I noticed again my Uncle Cherwachidze wearing his grand uniform, covered with gold lace and orders of every description—he seemed more than ever to form part of the train of his Empress.
Then came the Court and the clergy, defiling into the room next to ours, the latter intoning some wonderful Russian chants, which are so perfectly rendered that one imagines them to be instrumentally accompanied.
The anticipated attempt at assassination was not long delayed: presently some fragments of shrapnel shells fell into our room and quite close to the group of people where I was standing, smashing the panes of glass of one of the windows, which were strewn all over the floor. These shells had been fired from the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul situated on the opposite side of the Neva.
Ostensibly the guns were fired as a salute with blank cartridges, but through an oversight of the commanding officer one had been fired with live shells, the result being that a perfect hail of shrapnel fell on to the Chapel in which the Emperor had taken up his position, he of course being the object aimed at.
The Tzar during this terrible ordeal never moved a muscle except to make the Sign of the Cross.