"Did you observe with what devotion the Czarina kissed the crucifix? Did you not know what was her petition?" "I neither know, nor did I remark anything." It was late before the church service had ended. The congregation quickly dispersed and hastened home. The streets were deserted. On the first day of Lent every family man makes a point of supping at home. And as among the poorer classes in St. Petersburg only about every seventh man is blessed with a wife, others join together and get some female of their own class in life to prepare the Lenten soup for them. This is seen on every table, rich and poor, whether in hardware vessel or delicate china tureen. Even upon the Czar's table it may not be absent; the imperial cook prepares it according to time-honored formula. This soup every head of the family is expected to partake of in his own home. Time was when even in the Winter Palace the custom was observed. Time was! The table was laid for two covers only; no guests were invited. The many dishes, all prepared with oil and honey, were served for the two alone. Then came a day when the imperial wife awaited her husband in vain at the Lenten meal. He came not. And yet she waited and waited; the supper waited also. Some untoward circumstance had come between them. First the meats grew cold, then their hearts. Yet all the same, year after year, the wife had two covers laid on the first evening in Lent, and waited on and on, until the dishes grew cold, and still she did not touch them. She was waiting for him. Hours would pass, the imperial wife sitting lonely, waiting, listening for the slightest sound, wondering whether it were not her husband's footstep outside the tapestried door which connected the corridor of their apartments--that door, at the opening of which her heart had formerly overflowed with earthly bliss. Alas! now the lock had long grown stiff and rusty. Suddenly the clock began to strike--a mechanical clock which Araktseieff had had made in Paris. The piece it plays is the National Anthem; it plays it but once in the twenty-four hours--at one o'clock in the morning--the hour at which Czar Paul had been murdered by his generals and nobles in his bedchamber.