I started, knowing that this was contrary to every usage of the Russian court, and that the Byzantine custom compelled the imperial princesses to remain behind a canopy. Miloslavsky saw my surprise. “It is an innovation,” he said; “but Sophia Alexeievna is overcome with grief for her brother; and, after all, why should not a sister stand beside her brother’s corpse?” He seemed to challenge me to express an opinion. “I am surprised only because I know that your customs are so arbitrary,” I replied, smoothly. “In France, it would seem most natural for the czarevna to follow her brother’s body to the grave.” “Yet it has been the cause of much dispute,” said Miloslavsky, bitterly, “and the Czarina Natalia is opposed to it. Naturally enough she does not grieve much that the elder brother has passed away from her son’s path to the throne,” he added in an undertone. I was discreetly silent. We had passed through the anterooms out on to the Red Staircase, and stood looking down upon the crowd. It reminded me of the election of Peter, only that this was a silent throng, impressed, no doubt, by the presence of death. The procession was forming, and everywhere the black garb of mourning seemed to swallow up the light. The Russian dress of that day was a strange contrast to the French. The men wore robes and sleeves as long as those of the women, and a man’s high cap was not unlike a woman’s head-gear. It was seventeen years afterwards that Peter the Great inaugurated a change of fashion by cutting off the sleeves of the boyars, with his own hands, at a supper given by the Boyar Sheremétief. Verily, I have lived to see great changes in Russia since that day, when I stood looking down upon the Red Place, thronged with black-robed figures, and upon the bier of the Czar Feodor. It was the darkest hour in that period of history, and just before the dawn of a new reign; the star of the house of Romanof was in the ascendant, but its light was not yet diffused. It was a dull day; the sky was heavy, and the Kremlin wore its most gloomy aspect; even the red pavement of the square was almost obscured by the mass of people, and the voices of the multitude were hushed as the deep notes of the great cathedral bells tolled solemnly, on every hand, the mournful dirge of Russia’s mightiest, laid in the dust to share at last the common fate of his humblest subject,--for how great a leveller is Death!