114 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-XIII 



Duchess Catherine at the Fortress Church. It was 

 very impressive, almost as much so as the funeral of the 

 Emperor Nicholas, which I had attended at the same 

 place nearly forty years before. The Emperor Alexander 

 III, with his brothers, had followed the hearse and coffin 

 on foot, and his Majesty was evidently greatly fatigued. 

 Soon he retired to take rest, and then it was that we began 

 to have the first suspicion of his fatal illness. Up to that 

 time there had been skepticism. Very few had thought it 

 possible that a man of such giant frame and strength 

 could be seriously ill, but now there could be no doubt 

 of it. Standing near him, I noticed his pallor and evi 

 dent fatigue, and was not surprised that he twice left 

 the place, in order, evidently, to secure rest. There was 

 need of it. In the Russian Church the rule is that all must 

 stand, and all of us stood from about ten in the morning 

 until half-past one in the afternoon; but two high offi 

 cials covered with gold lace and orders, bearing tapers 

 by the side of the grand duchess s coffin, toppled over 

 from exhaustion and were removed. 



As to other spectacles, one of the most splendid was the 

 midnight mass on Easter eve. At my former visit I had 

 seen this at the Kazan Church ; now we went to the Cathe 

 dral of St. Isaac. The ceremony was brilliant almost 

 beyond conception, as in the old days ; the music was hea 

 venly ; and, as the clocks struck twelve, the cannons of the 

 fortress of Peter and Paul boomed forth, all the bells of 

 the city began chiming, and a light, appearing at the ex 

 treme end of the church, seemed to run in all directions 

 through the vast assemblage, and presently all seemed 

 ablaze. Every person in the church was holding a taper, 

 and within a few moments all of these had been lighted. 



Most beautiful of all was the music at another of these 

 Easter ceremonies, when the choristers, robed in white, 

 came forth from the sanctuary and sang hymns by the 

 side of the empty sepulcher under the dome. 



The singing by the choirs in Russia is, in many respects, 

 more beautiful than similar music in any other part of 



