What did one see? A young man thin and slim, who seemed to be entirely crushed under the weight of the massive crown which was reposing on his head, and of the heavy robe of cloth of gold, lined with ermine, which was thrown upon his shoulders. He was tottering as he walked along, and his pale, tired face, together with his uncertain steps, bore no resemblance whatever to the firm and superb countenance of his father thirteen years before. As he reached the door of the Church of the Holy Archangels, one noticed that he suddenly stopped, as if unable to proceed any further, completely worn out by the fatigue of the long ceremony that had come to an end a few moments before, and the hand which was holding the sceptre, enriched with precious stones, which the Metropolitan of Moscow had just handed to him, dropped down at his side, whilst the symbol of might and of power which it was holding, escaped from its grasp. Chamberlains and lords in waiting hastened to pick it up, and the crowd never noticed what had occurred, but those who had witnessed the incident, were deeply impressed by it, and different rumours began to circulate in regard to it, rumours which would have it that it was a bad omen, whilst persons well up in the study of history, and especially in that of foreign countries tried to find an analogy between it, and the remark made by Louis XVI. on the day of his Coronation at Rheims, when he had complained that his crown was hurting him, and felt too heavy for his head. A few days later there happened another event, which reminded one of a similar coincidence between the life of the unfortunate King whose head was to fall on the scaffold of the Champs Elysées, and that of Nicholas II. It occurred during the popular feast which is always given in Moscow after the Coronation of a Czar. A crowd amounting to several thousands of men and women, some say three hundred thousand, had gathered together on a field known by the name of Khodinka Plain, in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, to be present at it, when suddenly a panic which was never accounted for nor explained, seized this multitude, and about twenty thousand human creatures were crushed to death in the short space of a few minutes. The emotion produced by this disaster among all the different classes of society was very deep and terrible. The only person who accepted it with calm and even with indifference, if the reader will forgive me for this expression, was the Czar himself, who, however, and this is a justice which I must render to him, only heard much later the whole extent of the disaster, but who at the same time, did not try to learn anything definite about it, on the day when it took place, and who, under the direct influence of his Consort, gave directions to reply to the French Ambassador, the Comte de Montebello, who had enquired whether he ought to postpone the ball he was giving that same night, that “he did not see any necessity for doing so.”