"Human language has no words to express the anguish at that moment imprinted on the Czar's countenance. With glowing eyes, convulsed lips, and gathered brows, he stood there clinching his hands; and, while with his eyes he followed the barge, a gigantic struggle seemed working within him. I have witnessed much sorrow in my life; never did I feel such sympathy for a man as for this one! He dared not betray his feelings, for the Czarina was standing by his side. She, too, studied his face with great attention. Suddenly she bent towards him, and, taking his hand in hers, cried, 'Why do you not weep? Why keep back your tears? It is your own dear child who is being borne to her last resting-place!' And, as if to open the font of his grief, she threw herself upon the Czar's breast and burst into weeping. And then the mighty ruler, before whom millions of men tremble, knelt before his neglected, forsaken wife, embraced her knees, and, sobbing, kissed the hem of her dress, she joining her tears to his. It was a scene I shall never forget. The separated husband and wife were reunited in the hour of their bitter sorrow; they had come together again, the past forgotten. They leaned over the balcony, saluting the disappearing barge with a last farewell! My eyes fill with tears as I think of it." The Prince did well to weep. It was meet that one or other of them should shed tears at what had passed. "Then, pressing his hand to his heart, the Czar gasped, 'And there was not a soul to follow her to the grave!' It was indeed a bitter thought. Even a beggar has some poor wretch to follow and mourn for him. And she had no one! Then a thought struck me, and I rushed to my gondola and came to you. I am the Czar's Prime-Minister, you a Princess Narishkin. How would it be were we to catch up the funeral barge in a light, fast-rowing gondola, and act as Sophie Narishkin's mourners? What do you think?" But the woman beside him had not depth of feeling enough to take her noble-hearted husband's hand in hers, and giving her tears free course, to say, "Yes, let us go; Sophie Narishkin is mine to mourn over!" No; that woman had more power of self-control than had the Czar. Her woman's pride, conquering the animal instinct--sometimes called maternal--within her, she could answer coldly and calmly: "What are you thinking of? How should we account to the world for our uncalled-for escort? And, then, it is too late; before I could put on a mourning-dress the barge would have got beyond all possibility of our reaching it. Besides, what do I care for Sophie Narishkin?" She could even speak thus at that supreme moment. How true was the Muscovite scientist's classification--a degenerate cat. Even a normal cat mourns its young. "What is Sophie Narishkin to me?"