After dinner we went to the opera to see “Tannhauser.” I felt tired and asked Sergy what was the time every minute. After the second act, he took me out on to the boulevard to eat ices.
November 21st.—We had to get up very early in the morning to catch the express. It was six o’clock when we drove to the Gare du Nord. There were few people about. We only saw the milk-carts on their morning rounds, and the street-sweepers at work.
Our long journey is nearing its end. In another two days we shall be back in Russia.
CHAPTER XCIII
ST. PETERSBURG
CORONATION OF NICOLAS II
We went round all the world and returned more satisfied than ever with our capital. I feel like an escaped prisoner.
A few days after our arrival, my husband presented to the Emperor a deputation composed of representatives of different tribes inhabiting Oriental Siberia, who offered to His Majesty, according to custom, a silver dish with “Bread and Salt” and beautiful sable-skins. The corridors in the Grand Hôtel, where we had taken an apartment, were crowded with people wanting to get a glimpse of the deputies. One of them, Tifountai, one of the richest Chinese merchants of Khabarovsk, who had prominent oriental ideas about women when passing through Paris, led a dissipated life in the Great Babylon, that went on for a week, and did not arrive in time for the presentation. The representatives of different countries began to arrive at St. Petersburg on their way to Moscow, where the Coronation of Nicolas II. was to take place. One of the first arrivals was the Ambassador of the Chinese Emperor, the famous Li Hung Chang who had been treacherously wounded in Japan. Notwithstanding his eighty-two years, he looks very alert and vigilant. My husband had an interview with the old diplomatist, after which he presented his suite to him. According to Chinese etiquette the mandarin addressed to everyone two stereotype questions translated by his dragoman into French: “What is your name,” and “How old are you?” Henritzi, the youngest of Sergy’s aide-de-camps, who was of German origin and spoke his national tongue better than French, when answering to the last questions, said that he was twenty-four years old, German-fashion: “Quatre-vingt,” vier und zwanzig, which means eighty-four in French. The dragoman casting an astonished glance at the young octogenarian, translated his answer to the letter. The old mandarin never winced, and rising from his seat, bowed low to the “Ninon de l’Encles” of the unfair sex. (I beg your pardon, gentlemen!) In China old age is greatly venerated. If you wish to make a Chinaman perfectly happy, all you need to say is “How old you look!” When the reception was over, Li Hung Chang remitted to my husband the Chinese order of the “Double Dragon,” bearing the imprinted inscription “Before this the lion will grow pale and the tiger mute.”
Little by little, St. Petersburg was getting empty. The railway-line to Moscow, notwithstanding its twenty-four trains a day, could hardly supply all the passengers proceeding to the old capital; they had to book their places a month beforehand.
A great many crowned heads had gathered in Moscow. Amongst the European guests there were several exotic personages who had come from Siam, Japan and other distant countries.
In the beginning of May Sergy went to Moscow to be present at the Coronation, which was to take place on the 15th May. That day at ten o’clock in the morning all the church-bells in St. Petersburg began ringing, and at noon volleys of artillery announced the beginning of the ceremony in the Kremlin, and at the end of the ceremony the Coronation was made known by a salute and one-hundred-and-one cannon shots.