For the truth was that even loyal Muscovites had come to regard a meeting with the Czar as little short of a calamity, since it was required by him that whenever he passed through a street all traffic must be suspended, pedestrians must cease their promenading, the occupants of vehicles must dismount, and everybody, from the serf to the boyar, must kneel bareheaded, be the wind never so cutting or the snow never so deep, till the “Little Father”—the expression is not meant to be ironic—had passed by. This practice, an old usage belonging to the barbarous days of the Empire, had been abolished by the good sense of Peter the Great; but Paul, on his accession, had revived the custom in all its rigour, so that Wilfrid, glancing along the Prospekt, saw two lines of kneeling people, some of whom even, with a servility truly Oriental, were touching the slush with their foreheads. Close to Wilfrid was a landau from which there had alighted two ladies, the one aged and feeble, the other young and delicate, both obviously of noble blood since the panels of their carriage bore an armorial device; yet there they were, side by side with their coachmen and footmen, kneeling in the roadway upon a horrible mixture of snow and mud that chilled their limbs and stained their fur cloaks. And woe to them and to any other person who should rise too quickly after the Czar had gone by! If detected by a backward glance of the Imperial eye it was well for the offenders if they escaped the knout or Siberia. As Wilfrid beheld the obvious discomfort of these two ladies, a fierce anger flamed in his breast against the sovereign who required such humiliating obeisance. During all this time the regiment, marching twelve abreast, was drawing nearer to the place where Wilfrid stood. Some of the kneeling throng, conjecturing from his attitude that he was a foreigner, ventured to give him good-natured advice. “Kneel to the Czar, little father!” they cried. “Kneel if you would escape the knout. See! his eye is upon you.” That fact made no difference in Wilfrid’s attitude. Determined to assert his English manhood he stood erect as a palm. Other Englishmen besides Wilfrid had declined to bow the knee, but they had been strong in the knowledge that they could obtain the protection of Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador. Wilfrid had no such hope to sustain him, since the withdrawal of that minister, on the outbreak of the war, had left Paul free to do as he liked with those obstinate Englishmen who refused to acknowledge his divinity. “Halt!” yelled the little figure, who, for his size, possessed marvellous lung power. “Halt! Stop that music!” The regiment ceased its marching, the band its playing. There was a terrible silence as the Czar, with a glare in his eye, marched straight up to Wilfrid. A shiver of expectancy ran through the throng. Some wriggled forward upon their knees with a view of getting into a better position for watching the sequel.