You are to suppose the heavy brazen field-guns belching and bellowing, whole miles of Minié rifles blazing and cracking, the crowds of spectators scattering for their lives as the Chasseurs de Vincennes advanced in column at the gymnastic pace of one hundred and eighty steps a minute, and the mounted Chasseurs charged, thundering over the wet soggy ground. Decorations were distributed to distinguished commanders, and a few smart sous-officiers in brand-new uniforms. Louis David painted the beautiful Empress in the braided tunic of a Hussar, wearing a beaver with a military plume, and mounted on a handsome charger. What earthly brush, asked the Imperial Press organ in a gush of inky rapture, could do justice to the grace of the Emperor?

In sober truth, the little, big-headed man with the long body and the short legs, was a finished master of the equestrian haute école. Few men in France could handle a horse better; and as he passed along the lines upon some splendid animal, he would turn its head towards the eagle-topped standard of each regiment, compelling his beast to bow and caracole as its rider did homage to the avuncular emblem. This circus-rider’s trick, no matter how often repeated—never failed to elicit a genuine shout of “Vive l’Empereur!”

And what of the Northern potentate, England’s old friend and ally, for whose warning and instruction these remarkable international demonstrations of military power had been devised and carried out? Physically the biggest man in his vast Empire, there was no moral littleness about Nicholas. He was wary and subtle and diplomatic, but he was not cunning or sly. He was a galloping terror to dishonest, peculating officials—it is on record what retribution followed his hawklike swoop upon the Imperial Dockyard at Cronstadt, where stores and materials of war—being conveyed in at one of the three gates, and duly registered by the clerks of the Receiving Department, were by a second gate, convanient—as Mrs. Geogehagan would have said—smuggled out again, and brought back per medium of the third; once more to be debited against, and paid for by the Russian Government. Also, there was at this date—sweeping the streets of Sevastopol in company with other persons, distinctively attired, shaven in sections, and adorned as to the legs with irons—a convict who had—previously to the Tsar’s last visit to that important naval stronghold—shone glorious in bright green cloth, belaced cocked hat, and golden epaulets, as Governor of that place.

For—though this Tsar would have dearly liked to be sole master of Europe—though he would have gladly renamed the Bosphorus and built a new St. Petersburg at the mouth of the Dardanelles—though it would have gratified him to add Afghanistan and India to his dominions—though he was often unscrupulous in the spreading of nets for the catching of able men—though he would sacrifice soldiers in hundreds of thousands, did he deem it necessary for the safety of his State and his religion—though he punished Treason—real or imaginary—with the knout and imprisonment, Siberian exile or death—one cannot deny him to have been a high-minded and honest-souled, if prejudiced and narrow gentleman; who strove, according to his lights, to be just towards men, and upright before God.

There was not a drop of coward’s blood in him—those who hated him most were ready to admit that. He would, in his grandson’s place, have gone out from the Winter Palace alone to meet the strikers who carried the ikons, on that 18th of January, 1905. He threw all Russia into mourning, but he would never have marked upon the Calendar that red St. Vladimir’s Day. Nor, having converted a peaceable demonstration into a general massacre of children, nursemaids, discontented workmen, and harmless citizens—would he have sat shuddering and shaking in his guarded palace, and left his mother to play the man.

Though getting somewhat stout, stiff, and elderly by this time, Nicholas was still what Mrs. Geogehagan, seeing his portrait in the illustrated newspapers borrowed from the Mess by the Colonel’s lady—approvingly termed “a fine upstanding figure av a man.” After the Peace of 1815, being then a handsome young Colossus of twenty, he had cut a dashing figure at the various Courts of Europe.... English Society had adored and fêted him—adipose elderly dowagers who had at that date been famous dancing beauties, boasted of having been his partners in the then newly-imported waltz.

In the Memoirs of the late Dowager-Duchess of Strome—who as Lady Margaretta Bawne, was a Maid of Honor to Princess Victoria, and subsequently Lady of the Bed-chamber to the young Queen—you will find in the chapter headed “How We Danced when I was Young” a vivid description of a waltz experienced with the superb Grand Duke at one of Almack’s Balls.

“It was,” says the venerable raconteuse, “like dancing with a human cyclone. After the first glissade and twirl my sandals quitted the floor—seldom to revisit it until the stopping of the music put a termination to the furious revolutions of the dance. During the ordeal—witnessed by an admiring crowd comprising several Crowned Heads and half the notabilities of Europe—I lost my slippers—my coronet—my combs—and finally my consciousness—which returned to me—in a shock of alarmed modesty—with the resounding salute imprinted on my cheek by His Imperial Highness at the final arpeggio.”