Читать книгу Once A Grand Duke by Alexander Grand Duke of Russia - Alexander Mikhailovich - Страница 26

SHADOWS of tall candles. Chanting priests. Beautiful singing of a mammoth choir. Bald heads of kneeling generals. Tear-stained faces of grand duchesses. Whisperings of worried courtiers. And all eyes centered upon the two Emperors: one lying in the coffin, peace and resignation written on his face marred by the dark blots of wounds; another standing by his side, forceful, majestic, subduing sorrow and immune to fear.

Twice a day, seven days in succession, we attended the divine services in the Winter Palace. The transportation of the body to the Fortress of Peter and Paul took place on the morning of the eighth day. The people wanted to see once more the Czar-Liberator, so the longest route had to be chosen enabling the procession to pass through the principal streets of the capital.

We felt exhausted. Our nerves were strained. Physical fatigue combined with anxiety brought us all to the verge of hysteria. At night we sat in our beds, brooding over the catastrophe of the previous Sunday and asking ourselves what was going to happen next. The image of the man bending over the body of a wounded Cossack and braving more bombs would not leave our minds. We knew that something immeasurably greater than a loving uncle and a courageous emperor had receded with him into the past. Idyllic Russia, the country of the ruling father and obedient sons ceased to exist on March 1, 1881. Never again would a Russian Czar be able to think of his subjects in terms of boundless confidence; never again would he be allowed to give his undisturbed attention to the cares of the state. The romantic traditions of the past and the sentimental conceptions of sovereignty followed Alexander II to his tomb in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. They too were mortally wounded by the explosion of that tragic Sunday, and nobody could have denied that the future of the empire, possibly of the entire world, depended upon the issue of the coming contest between the new Czar of Russia and the fast increasing forces of destruction.