Gradually the limit of age decreased. First commissions were demanded for boys of twelve, and obtained; then the age dropped to ten, then to eight, to six, to three. No duties were required of all these young officers, who were not even obliged to draw their own pay; their fathers were permitted to do this for them. But promotion proceeded in each case with regularity, and soon it was a common thing to see a promising young officer of seven years toddling at his mothers side in the epaulettes of a captain of the Guards. But the matter did not end here. It now became the fashion to apply for commissions for male children as soon as born. Lieutenants were to be seen carried about in their nurses' arms and captains rode in perambulators, while majors and colonels of ten and twelve strutted about the streets, to the pride and no small profit of their happy parents. One would suppose that the comedy had at this point reached the very limit of absurdity; but this was not so. It occurred to some ingenious boyar about to enter into the delights and responsibilities of wedlock to apply for commissions for a son or two in advance. If his marriage should be blessed with offspring--well; if not, well also; for no one would be likely to inquire into the matter as long as the old Empress lived, and the pay of two or three officers of the Guards--non-existent, certainly, but steadily rising in rank for all that--would be a comfortable addition to the income of his parents that might have been. This was the millennium of Catherine's _enfants gâtés_, the boyars, and it came to an end with her death and the accession of Paul, who had long watched the scandal from his retreat at Gatchina and watched it with helpless displeasure and anger. Paul was a strict disciplinarian and the sight of the degradation of the Guards maddened him. One of his first acts after his accession was to hold a review of the corps, a review at which every officer was compelled to be present or to hand in his resignation. That must indeed have been the weirdest parade upon record. Officers in arms, officers in perambulators, officers clinging to their mothers' skirts; shy and self-conscious majors of ten wandering helplessly about the Champs de Mars, colonels of twelve and fourteen asking one another to which regiment they belonged, and the stern, angry Emperor surveying the motley scene as the executioner eyes his victim before dealing the fatal stroke which is to end him once and for all. In spite of his anger, the Tsar Paul displayed some humour upon this occasion, perhaps with the intention of impressing upon all witnesses the absurdity of the prevailing state of affairs. Every officer was called upon to take his proper place with his own battalion, and to obey the words of command presently issued by the few remaining veterans of the various regiments.