By Neva's waters

It was a usage of the Russian Ministry, in 1801 at least, for each member to present himself at the Winter Palace once a week on a stated day for the purpose of reporting on the affairs of his office.

Count Pahlen’s hour for meeting the Czar coincided with that of General Benningsen, and hence, on the forenoon of a certain day in early summer, seated in a three-horse car, they were making their way towards St. Petersburg after a night spent at Strelna.

Upon entering the suburbs the two ministers were immediately struck by the unusual number of people abroad. Like other cities St. Petersburg has its artisan class that rises early and works till late. On this particular morning, however, the toilers had apparently taken leave of work, and were standing in knots about the streets and squares.

As the day was not marked in the calendar as a feast, some affair of great moment must have caused them to suspend their labours. They looked, by their grave air and subdued voices, as men look when hearing of the death of a king.

As the Petersburgers caught sight of the carriage, their whisperings ceased, and they eyed the ministers with an air that sent misgiving to the heart of the timid Pahlen; for, if ever hatred was seen in the eyes of men, it was seen in the eyes of the Petersburgers that morning.

On the previous day their appearance in public had elicited cheers and other tokens of good-will. Now all was changed; in one night they seemed to have toppled from the height of their popularity.

Interpreting this in his own way, Pahlen concluded that in his absence some ill news must have reached the city; that devil of a Nelson—he was known to be in the Baltic—had perhaps been bombarding Revel.

When Pahlen turned into the Nevski Prospekt, he met with a fresh shock. As high minister of the Czar, he might surely look for recognition and respect from the fashionable and wealthy crowd, whose daily habit it was to drive to and fro along that grand thoroughfare. But no!

A boyar of princely rank, seated in a splendid equipage, drew near. He was well known to Pahlen, who waved his hand in greeting. Looking straight before him, the boyar drove past, altogether ignoring the presence of the chancellor and the general.

This disdainful indifference towards men with whom lay the power of banishment to Siberia, kindled the anger of the two ministers, anger that increased as they continued their way.

They smiled at this fair lady; they saluted that grandee, but met with no recognition whatever. It was clear that the élite of St. Petersburg had made up its mind to ignore them. Why?

Fallen ministers have no friends—in Russia. Was it possible that the Czar had made up his mind to dismiss them, and that his determination had somehow become known to the people?

Glancing ahead Benningsen saw coming along the Prospekt a mounted colonel of his own regiment.

“Muscovitz,” muttered he, fingering his sabre. “Let the fellow fail to salute, and I’ll run him through.”

However, Colonel Muscovitz in passing brought a hand up to his helmet, though in a somewhat perfunctory manner.

“Halt!” yelled Benningsen; and the colonel, with a somewhat queer look, reined in his steed.

“Are we still ministers of the Czar?”

“I have heard of nothing to the contrary, General.”

“Then will you tell me what has happened during the past twenty-four hours to cause everybody in St. Petersburg to look as black as the devil?”

“Pardon, General; I carry a message from the Czar, and may not tarry in his service. The answer to your question is to be seen at the Orphan Asylum.”

So saying, Muscovitz saluted with the same indifferent air as before and rode off quickly, much as if it were a disgrace to be seen talking with the two ministers.

The Orphan Asylum? The two looked inquiringly at each other. The edifice in question was a foundation of the ex-Empress Mary, and the ex-Empress Mary, as both well knew, had good reason for hating the existing Ministry.

“Now, what devilry has that old bedlam been up to?” said Benningsen. “Drive to the Orphan Asylum,” he cried, turning to the coachman.

“Better not,” murmured Pahlen. “A crowd may be there, and I like not the people’s looks this morning. They would do us mischief if they dared. Besides, the Czar awaits us.”

But Benningsen scoffed at the other’s fears, and swore he would go there though the place should contain ten thousand devils.

Arrived within sight of the building, they found the space fronting it filled with a vast throng, drawn mainly from the lower orders, a throng jostling, excited, garrulous. Women and children were there, as well as men, all animated apparently with the one object of pushing their way to the fore, in order to obtain a glimpse of something exposed to view behind the railings that guarded the façade of the Orphan Asylum. Everybody in the crowd was talking at once, making it impossible for the ministers to gather anything intelligible. The hubbub was loudest in front where those in full enjoyment of the view clung to the railings, refusing to give place to their fellows in the rear.

“A nice disorderly mob!” growled Benningsen, standing up in the carriage and surveying the crowd as it swayed to and fro like waves of the sea. “Where is the Governor of the city or the Chief of the Police? Asleep?”

“If the object behind those railings be to our hurt, Baranoff and his brother will not be over-eager to disperse the throng.”

Pahlen’s suspicion was well founded. The Governor of the city and the Chief of the Police, having a fore-knowledge of what was to take place, had arranged that the people were not to be interfered with.

At this point a man on the outskirts of the crowd suddenly caught sight of the two ministers.

“See, see!—Pahlen and Benningsen,” he cried excitedly, extending his forefinger towards them.

Those beside the speaker turned, and, observing at whom he pointed, took up the cry—

“Pahlen and Benningsen!”

There was a wild rush of feet over the pavement, and before the terrified driver could set his steeds in motion the carriage was surrounded by a crowd of fierce-eyed men. Pahlen, his cheeks blanched, shrank back. Benningsen, familiar with the rush of bayonets on the battle-field, lost nothing of his presence of mind.

Whipping out a brace of pistols, he pointed them, the one to the right, the other to the left.

“I’ll make a dead man of the first that comes within a yard of the car.”

Those advancing with a fell purpose instantly stopped short, and strove to stem the pressure in their rear. They knew that, happen to him what might, Benningsen would keep his word. Had he not cut down a soldier in the very teeth of a hostile regiment?

Benningsen took advantage of the momentary lull to single out with his eye a young man whose dress showed him to be a student of the university, a youth distinguished likewise from the rest of the crowd by his bold, not to say defiant, bearing.

“Hearken, sirrah, your name?”

“Nikon, son of Andreas.”

“Well, Nikon son of Andreas, you seem a more sensible sort of fellow than those around you. Just tell us in a few words to what all this excitement is due?”

“To the picture.”

“What picture?”

“The picture placed at dawn before the Orphan Asylum by command of the Empress Mary. Does that picture tell the truth?” he added with a threatening look.

“How the devil should I know when I haven’t seen it.”

“Come and see it then,” said the student.

This was deemed a good idea by the crowd, who seemed to have taken fresh courage from the student’s bold attitude.

“Yes, yes!” they cried. “Bring them face to face with it. Show them their wickedness.”

The student gave the ministers no alternative. Forgetting or ignoring Benningsen’s threat to shoot, he took hold of the horses by the bridle, turned their heads in the direction of the asylum, and motioned the bystanders aside with his hand, crying, “Way there for Pahlen and Benningsen.”

The voice and gesture of the student caused the crowd to open a path, and thus the ministers passed slowly through a lane of people, who received them with a running fire of threats.

“Down with the regicides!”

“Death to the murderers of the Czar!”

“The liars who told us that Paul died of apoplexy!”

“Pull Benningsen from the car!”

“Stamp on his mouth, as he stamped on Paul’s!”

And but for the dissuasive words of the student the crowd would have made good their threats.

The student, having arrived at the railings that guarded the front of the Orphan Asylum, halted and cried—

“Behold your work!”

Pahlen gave a strange gasp. Benningsen looked on with an air of scornful indifference.

If the Ministry had hoped their crime would never be revealed to the public, that hope was now gone. For there, exposed to view behind the railings, was an expanse of canvas, twenty feet by ten, painted with a tableau, vivid and grim in its realism. It represented the interior of a dimly-lit bed-chamber with furnishings of the simplest. Within this chamber were human figures, drawn to life-size, their faces limned with a fidelity that made them instantly recognisable. Benningsen, gazing, saw himself standing with the heel of his boot planted upon the mouth of a struggling figure held down by four grim-faced men, two of whom were drawing the fatal noose around the throat of their victim.

The artist had dealt fairly with Prince Ouvaroff, who was making an attempt to stay the deed. Count Pahlen, more scrupulous, or more craven, than his agents, was represented as standing outside the chamber listening at the partly-opened door, at his feet the wounded body of the faithful Voronetz.

The helplessness of the victim, and the brutal strength of the assassins, formed a contrast that would have moved the least emotional to a sense of horror, pity, and indignation; and, as if to drive home the moral of the picture, there was written at its foot, in Russian, what were erroneously supposed by the crowd to be Paul’s last words, words well adapted to quicken the blood of the coldest Muscovite—

“I LOOK TO MY PEOPLE TO AVENGE ME!”

Whatever weakening of the sentiment may take place in the twentieth century, certain it is that in the early part of the nineteenth the feeling towards the Czar was a sort of religion with the Muscovites of the lower classes. Rule he never so ill, still a Czar was a Czar and his murder the greatest of crimes. So at least the crowd seemed to think, if their looks and words meant anything.

“This is true,” said the student, pointing to the picture, “for the good Empress would never put forth a lie. Ye are murderers! And what saith Holy Writ of such? ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’”

“It seems, then, that this is a court of justice,” said Benningsen.

He could afford to sneer, for he saw at that moment what the other apparently did not see.

“It is an assembly of the people, who adjudge you both to be worthy of death. You shall be hanged from these railings.”

“Lying prophet!” said Benningsen with a sardonic grin. “Look there!”

“The soldiers! the soldiers!” was the cry that suddenly rose from all sides.

And the student, looking in the direction indicated by Benningsen, saw glinting over the heads of the people the plumed helmets of a posse of cavalry, who, laying about them with the flat of their sabres, were endeavouring to open a way to the spot where the ministers were.

There was a moment of irresolution on the part of the crowd, and then, with a howl, they rushed at the carriage.

Well was it for Benningsen that disguised police existed, otherwise he would have made a tragic ending then and there.

It so happened, however, that a number of these secret agents of the Government had been slowly edging their way to the front, with the result that the crowd suddenly found the carriage girt by a ring of men, armed with batons and pistols, who, in the quickness of their appearing, seemed to have sprung from the ground. Their resolute attitude cowed the mob as if by magic, and as the trampling of horse-hoofs and the waving of sabres were now close at hand, to be far from the ministers and not near them, now became the object of the crowd.

Benningsen made no attempt at taking reprisals. At a word from him the cavalry closed in order round the carriage, and, escorted thus, the two ministers made their way to the Winter Palace.

Here, in the ante-chamber where it was their custom to await the pleasure of the Emperor, they found the rest of the ministers assembled, Count Baranoff alone excepted, a very significant exception. They had all received a special summons to attend the Imperial presence, and were looking somewhat downcast, an aspect due to the belief that the coming interview would end in their dismissal.

From the vast crowd that had gathered in front of the palace there came with regular iteration, the cry of “Down with the Ministry!”—a cry plainly heard by those within the ante-chamber.

“Alexander will throw us to the wolves to save himself,” said Plato Zuboff, an old lover of Catharine’s, and one of the two actual assassins that had drawn the fatal sash around the throat of her son Paul.

“Think you that he will listen to the cry of the canaille?” said Pahlen. “That were to show himself a weakling—to set a premium upon future disorder.”

“But the intellectuals, too, are clamouring for our downfall,” answered Zuboff. “What! have you not seen to-day’s issue of the Journal de Petersbourg? Read that.”

And producing a copy of the newspaper he directed Pahlen’s attention to a column containing an article to the effect that the continuance in office of the regicidal ministry was a public scandal, certain to alienate the sympathies of the European chancelleries. In any other country but Russia, concluded the writer, with a boldness rarely found in the Muscovite press, the ministers would now be on their trial for murder.

“What was the censor doing,” frowned Pahlen, “to let language like this go forth to the world?”

“Doing! The will of the Empress Mary,” replied Zuboff, in a lower tone, glancing, as he spoke, at the door of the presence chamber, where, as he knew, the ex-Czarina was sitting in conference with her son Alexander. “Her one aim is to send us to the gibbet. Since Paul’s death she has never ceased intriguing against us. The picture is her latest weapon. Before daybreak this morning her hirelings were traversing the city with the cry, ‘Go, see the picture at the Orphan Asylum.’ And when the Black People had seen, and were cursing us, then her agents raised the further cry, ‘To the Winter Palace, and shout for the downfall of the Ministry.’ You hear them singing her tune.”

“And when you remember,” chimed in another minister, “who the Governor of the city is, and who is the Chief of the Police, you can understand why the people have been allowed to march at will through the streets.”

“Then the hand of Baranoff is in all this,” said Pahlen, biting his nails.

“Without doubt,” returned the other. “The picture-idea emanated from him, and was eagerly adopted by the Empress. We should have made him a partner in the abdication-plot. We thought to exclude him from the Ministry; it is he who is excluding us. To-day Baranoff triumphs all along the line. We go; he remains.”

As the speaker ended, the chamberlain appeared to summon them to the Czar’s presence.

Entering the chamber the ministers stood in a respectful semi-circle at a little distance from Alexander, who was seated at a table. Beside him was his mother, the ex-Empress Mary, whose presence was a new feature at ministerial meetings. She scarcely deserved the disrespectful term “beldam,” applied to her by Benningsen, for she had not yet reached her forty-second year, and still retained much of the magnificent beauty of her youthful days.

Alexander’s face wore a troubled look; it was evident that he and his mother had been divided upon some question, and her barely suppressed smile of triumph showed in whose favour the dispute had ended.

For a few moments the Emperor did not speak. His head was turned to a large window that commanded a view of the vast crowd outside, whose voices had all joined in singing the national anthem.

The Czar’s eyes kindled as he listened. His people were with him—whom, then, should he fear?

“’Tis a loyal crowd,” said the Empress-mother.

“Loyalty to the Czar,” broke in Pahlen, “should also include loyalty to the ministers appointed by him. I make request, Sire, that a certain picture be withdrawn from the front of the Orphan Asylum.”

“For what reason?” said the Empress. “Does it not tell the truth?”

“It has made us ministers odious in the eyes of the people. They have attempted our life.”

“Terrible!” said the Empress. “One may kill a Czar, but when it comes to killing a minister——”

She paused, as if unable to express in words the enormity of such a deed.

“But,” continued she, “this is a matter over which the Czar hath no jurisdiction. The Orphan Asylum is my own private property, and if I choose to decorate its exterior with a historic picture, who shall say me nay?”

“My mother speaks truly,” said Alexander. “If you would have the picture withdrawn, it is to her you must address your persuasions.”

“You will choose, Sire,” said Pahlen, “between the removal of the picture or the resignation of your chancellor.”

The Empress laughed contemptuously.

“Chancellors are cheap enough!”

The singing of the national anthem, having now come to an end, was superseded by various cries, the most frequent being, “Down with the Ministry!”

“The voice of the people is the voice of God,” said the Empress. “Go forth! Show yourself! Give them the answer they desire. Tell them that Czar and justice are the same word.”

Her authority over the Emperor was great, and she seemed pleased that the ministers should see it.

He rose, walked to a window and, opening it, stepped out upon the balcony. No sooner was he seen than the air rang with cries of greeting.

The lifting of the Czar’s hand was like the lifting of a magic wand. An instant hush fell upon the crowd.

“Good-day, my children.”

Like a roar of thunder came the answer—

“Good-day, Little Father!”

“What is your will with me?”

Almost before the words had left the Czar’s lips a man, evidently desirous of shaping the people’s answer, cried—

“Justice on the regicides!”

The cry was immediately taken up; it rolled from mouth to mouth through the length and breadth of the crowd, and was repeated again and again—

“Justice on the regicides!”

Then, as if surprised by their own boldness, the crowd became quiet again, waiting for the Czar’s answer. Would he grant the request thus irregularly made?

Alexander hesitated for a moment, as if reflecting, and then replied:—

“Depart quietly to your homes. The Czar will do justice.”

With simple and touching faith the crowd accepted this assurance of the Imperial tribune.

“The Little Father will punish the murderers! Hourra! Hourra! Now let us go. He will not let his word fall to the ground.”

Alexander, believing that his own withdrawal would accelerate the departure of the crowd, turned and entered the council-chamber.

He seemed to have derived fresh courage from this brief interview with his people. His air of restraint had vanished; he spoke with authority and dignity.

“Messieurs les Ministres, it must ever be the aim of a ruler to hold by the good-will of his subjects. You see for yourselves that I shall forfeit that good-will by retaining you in office. It behoves me, therefore, for the sake of public peace, to dispense with your services. Perhaps,” he continued, as if desirous of softening the humiliation of this dismissal, “perhaps, at some future day—it may be—that——”

Here he paused, not willing to make a rash promise.

“In thus dismissing us,” said Pahlen, “you break your written pledge.”

“Not so. My pledge to retain you in office was made dependent upon my father’s deposition. But you took from him not his crown only, but his life. As you have broken faith with me, I count it no wrong to break faith with you. Gentlemen, you will retire from the city to your country seats.”

“No greater punishment than that?” said the Empress.

“And there await my further pleasure,” Alexander added.

The discomfited ministers withdrew.

“The slave of his mother,” sneered Benningsen. “Our power is over. Dismissal to-day; to-morrow Siberia, if that old hag has her way.”

The ministers gone, Alexander turned a gratified face upon the Empress.

“Mother, you have done well,” he said, stooping to kiss her. “Thanks to a picture I enjoy a sense of freedom unknown before. Who is the artist that has done us such good service?”

“The Englishman, Lord Courtenay.”

The Czar’s face fell. His new-found pleasure vanished as he heard that name.[1]