We followed the procession through the great State apartments of the Palace, each room with a guard of honour from a different regiment, until the priests and bishops branched off to one of the principal staircases to go round the Palace; and when next we saw them they were accompanied by the Tsar, looking magnificent on a grey charger, followed by his brothers and sons, and a brilliantly mounted staff of the chief officials. Of the ceremony itself we could see nothing. It consists in the dipping of a cross by the Tsar into the water, through a hole made in the ice, and during the liturgy which follows, and lasts for a quarter of an hour, all the people, including the soldiers, remain uncovered. Even the Tsar must bare his head, so the late Emperor, who was bald, used to wear a wig for the occasion. It was luckily not very cold, but there was a keen wind blowing, and I am bound to say that the thermometer is a bad judge of temperature at St. Petersburg, for the wind is man’s worst enemy, and the days when the mercury is at its lowest are far more tolerable than those on which there are a few degrees of frost and biting blasts that race down the river. Happily we diplomatists had two stout glass windows between us and the weather, so we had no cause to complain. As soon as the waters had been duly blessed, and the service was over, out burst a cannonade from the fortress and from guns placed at regular intervals on the opposite bank of the Neva; then the Emperor and his staff mounted their horses and wended their way back, the priests carrying the blessed water and sprinkling the troops with it as they passed in front of them. The Empress being ill and unable to attend the ceremony, a golden goblet was filled with the water and carried to her for her use. We were all invited to luncheon, and after that there was a review of the Imperial Guards, thirty-four thousand men and eighty-four pieces of cannon; a quite magnificent display. As soon as the blessing of the waters and the review were finished, the mujiks were all allowed access to the consecrated hole in the ice. Into this they dipped themselves, fully clothed, to the end that they might purify themselves from the excesses of their holidays—more particularly from the sin of wearing masks, which, being forbidden by their religion, is one in which the orthodox take a special delight. Dripping icicles, but pure, and of a contented conscience, the mujik rushes from his freezing bath to his poor home, there to work, and, as soon as Lent comes, starve, till Easter shall set him free once more.