The lancers lead the van, blue and white, with streaming pennants at the points of their lances, six squadrons of them. The whole strength of the throne-guards, white, with breastplates of glittering gold flashing in the sunlight above the black satin skins of the stallions, ride halberd on thigh, surrounding the gently swaying state-carriages, scintillating with rich gilding and bright crystal and two of them crowned with the imperial crown, with teams of six and eight plumed greys. The horses foam over their bits, impatient, nervously pawing the ground, prancing because of the slow, ceremonious pace along the blinding, flagged roadway. In the first coach, the master of ceremonies, the Count of Threma; in the second, with the crown and the team of eight--and the roar of the cheering rises from behind the hedge of soldiers--the emperor, his uniform all gold, his robes of scarlet and ermine, his crown upon his head. It is the only time that the people have seen their emperor wear his crown. And they cheer. But the emperor makes no acknowledgment: through the glass of the coach he looks out, to left and right in turns, at the crowd, with a proud smile of self-consciousness and victory; and his face, full of race, full of force, cold with will, proud with authority, is inaccessible in its smile as that of a Roman emperor on his triumphal entry. It is a triumphal entry, this return from the Parliament House to his Imperial: a triumph over that which they denied him and upon which he has now laid his heavy hand, showing them all that his mere will can bend them to his word and purpose. And the cheers rise louder and louder from that capricious crowd, restrained like a woman by a ruler whom it now adores for his strength and admires for his imperial might, upon which he leans, as he passes from the Parliament House to his own palace, as though it were a whole army that lived upon his nod; and louder and louder, louder and louder the cheers ring out that sunny afternoon over the marble houses; and the emperor smiles continually, as though his smile meant: "Cheer away! What else can you do but cheer?..." In the next coach rides the Duke of Xara, robed, crowned; he stares rigidly over the vociferating crowd with the same glance that his mother reserves for the populace. In the next to that, the new governor-general of the capital, the head of the emperor's military household, the Duke of Mena-Doni, a rougher soldier than the Marquis of Dazzara and a less practised courtier, under whose military fist the white capital, like a beaten slave, crouched low during the martial law proclaimed after a single hour of disturbance that ventured to follow upon the emperor's decision to dissolve the house of deputies. His coarse, sensual mouth smiles with the same smile as that of the emperor, whose rude force he seems to impersonate; and he too seems to say: "Cheer away, shout hurrah!"