Emperor in the centre, pale, his lips trembling with emotion, just as I had seen him when his troops were cheering him on the battlefield; struggling for the bare possibility to stand or move forward, for he was lifted by the pressure clean off his feet, and whirled about helplessly. At length, extricated by a wedge of officers, he reached his carriage, only to experience almost as wonderful an ovation when he reached the raised portico of the Winter Palace. As for the Czarevna, the lady who is now Empress of Russia, her experiences at the Winter Palace were unique. As her carriage, following that of the Emperor, approached the terrace, the populace utilised it as a point whence to see and cheer the Emperor. Men scrambled on to the horses, the box, the roof, the wheels; progress became utterly impossible. A group of cadets and students, who lined the base of the terrace, were equal to the occasion. They dragged open the carriage door by dint of immense exertion: they lifted out the bright little lady, who clearly was greatly enjoying the fun, and they passed her from hand to hand above their heads, till the Emperor caught her, lifted her over the balustrades, and set her down by his side on the terrace. The fall of Plevna, and the welcome of his capital, had restored the Czar to apparent health and spirits. I watched him as he moved around the great salon of the Winter Palace, greeting his guests at the home-coming reception. He strode the inlaid floor a very emperor, upright of figure, proud of gait, arrayed in a brilliant uniform, and covered with decorations. A glittering court and suite thronged about the stately man with enthusiastically respectful homage; the dazzling splendour of the Winter Palace formed the setting of the sumptuous picture; and as I gazed on the magnificent scene, I could hardly realise that the central figure of it, in the pomp of his Imperial state, was of a verity the self-same man in whose presence I had stood in the squalid Bulgarian hovel, the same worn, anxious, shabby, wistful man who, with spasmodic utterance and the expression in his eyes as of a hunted deer, had asked me breathless questions as to the episodes and issue of the fighting.