Czar, I was shown the bed on which he expired in agony, and the gardien, lifting the coverlet, pointed to the mattress saturated with blood, and left just in the state in which it was when the poor Emperor breathed his last.
This morning (Tuesday, 19th) we started at nine o'clock on board an Admiralty steamer for Cronstadt. Our ambassador, Sir Edward Thornton, joined the party, and I had a great deal of interesting conversation with him during the voyage out and home. It takes one and a half hour to go down the Neva to Cronstadt; and though the banks of the river are flat, except where you see on the left bank the woods of Peterhoff and Oranienbaum, there is a certain grandeur in the river, owing to the great mass of water. At Cronstadt we were taken to see batteries and guns, and forts and turrets, and finally were entertained at luncheon by the marine officers, and returned to St Petersburg at six o'clock. Mr Albert Brassey's yacht, the Czarina, was lying off Cronstadt, and very well she looked. I now come to the end of my story! We have had dinner, and I have had a short drive since in the cool of the evening declining any further dissipation, and I am now going to bed, for we start early for Narva, and shall have five days of real hard work, I suspect.
Gomontovo, half-way between
Krasnoe Seló and Yamburg, Aug. 21, 1884.
We left St Petersburg yesterday by train at 9.30, and stopped at the second station beyond Gatschina on the Baltic line of railway, where we found carriages, which, after a drive of 20 versts, brought us here. This is a fair specimen of a country gentleman's house – not a château, but a good comfortable house made of wood, with good rooms fairly furnished. It belongs to Baron Veglio, and has been placed at the Emperor's disposal for three days as his headquarters. The weather, alas! has become unfriendly to us, and we arrived in a heavy storm of rain, and had to wait two hours for our baggage. But it was amusing to watch the Emperor's fourgons with the équipage de campagne arrive; and I must admit that they well understand how to improvise even an Imperial camp. The Emperor's and Empress's camp-beds were unpacked and settled up on a room on the ground-floor, the Grand-Duc Héritier being next door. Then there was the travelling plate, all in special boxes, silver mugs instead of glasses, and no china at all. Outside in the park or enclosure, fifty yards from the house, two large and twelve small tents had been pitched, where the generals dine and the minor officials sleep. I and the French general en mission, De Miribel, share a room in the house; and in the same passage with us, in little rooms, are the Grand-Dukes, the Minister of War, and the other foreign generals. My French colleague is very cheery, and sleeps like a top; I only wish I could sleep half as well as he does. We are at this moment seated opposite to each other at a little table, he on a chair, I on my bed, each writing to his wife!
At six o'clock we had an excellent dinner in the large tent, which, by the way, was used by the late Emperor through the whole of the Plevna campaign, though we all wore our cloaks and our forage-caps, on account of the cold and rain. At eight o'clock the Emperor and Empress arrived from Peterhoff, and we saw no more of them
