Coming from the ceremony in the chapel, we of the diplomatic corps found ourselves, at the foot of the great staircase, in a crush. But just at the side was a large door of plate-glass opening upon an outer gallery communicating with other parts of the palace; and standing guard at this door was one of the "Nubians" whom I had noticed, from time to time, at the Winter Palace--an enormous creature, very black, very glossy, with the most brilliant costume possible. I had heard much of these "Nubians," and had been given to understand that they had been brought from Central Africa by special command. At great assemblages in the imperial palaces, just before the doors were flung open for the entrance of the Majesties and their cortege, two great black hands were always to be seen put through the doors, ready to open them in an instant--the hands of two of these "Nubians." I had built up in my mind quite a structure of romance regarding them, and now found myself in the crush at the foot of the grand staircase near one of them. As I looked up at him he said to me, with deferential compassion, "If you please, sah, would n't you like to git out of de crowd, sah, through dis yere doah?" By his dialect he was evidently one of my own compatriots, and, though in a sort of daze at this discovery, I mechanically accepted his invitation; whereupon he opened the door, let us through, and kept back the crowd. Splendid, too, in its way, was the funeral of the Grand 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 evident 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 officials covered with gold lace and orders, bearing tapers by the side of the grand duchess's coffin, toppled over from exhaustion and were removed.