the okolnitchyï (carving equerry and Great Officer of the Crown), to the Sovereign and his guests at the State banquets. In very ancient times, too, the stolniki were employed in other ways, as envoys to foreign Courts and as provincial governors. The number of these dignitaries reached 500. In the second rank came the spalniki (from spat, to sleep) and the postiélniki (from postiél, bedtime), whose duties were to dress or undress the Sovereign and look after his bedchamber. Besides this, the spalnik was a member of the Privy Council, and the postiélnik was Keeper of the Seals for all secret business. Both these officials slept in the Tsar's room.
The okolnitchyié (from okolo, around—qui circa principem versabantur, as Du Cange says) make their first appearance in 1356, and their duties, likewise exceedingly varied, were generally of a judicial nature. For current affairs the Sovereign also had his striaptchyié (from striapat, to fulfil a duty), who, on great ceremonial occasions, bore the sceptre before him, held up his train, and looked after his arms. These were officers of an inferior rank, but not the lowest in the official hierarchy. After them came the diaki and the podiatchyié, clerks, learned men, who knew how to read and write. Their original function had been to sing in church, and hence their name—diak stands for deacon. They were employed at a later period as clerks in the offices, and by the sixteenth century these diaki were doing very much the work of the modern French référendaire. Some of them had seats on the Council, and were called doumnyié diaki. The podiatchyié were their assistants. At the very bottom of the ladder, and occupying a post which in other countries, and especially in Poland, carried much more prestige with it, came the dvoretskii, or dvornik, originally a sort of Court Marshal, but from the sixteenth century onwards a financial official, more especially—Keeper of the Privy Purse—a reproduction of the Eastern curialis, who underwent the same transformations.
The Tsarina's Court, with the exception of a few pages, none of them over ten years of age, who passed, as they grew up, into the Tsar's household, consisted of ladies only. The chief post was held by a boïarinia, who was responsible for the Privy Purse and the Bedchamber. Next to her a kraïtchinia, whose duty it was to look after all the personnel of the household, ruled a little world of maïsterytsé, dressmakers and embroideresses, gave orders to the postiélnitsé, and shared with them the honour of sleeping, turn about, in the Sovereign's room, and attending her on the rare occasions when she went abroad. When this occurred, the postiélnitsé turned themselves into amazons, mounted horses, and surrounded the Tsarina's coach.
