class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 48]"/> was of all jewels and especially of diamonds, he hoped to propitiate her by a unique gift of the kind. Catharine took the gift, but refused to receive the giver back into her favor. Her fickle affections were engaged by another handsome face, and Gregory Orloff spent the remaining years of his life in aimless journeyings varied by an occasional visit to St. Petersburg. He died mad in 1783. He used sometimes to address the Empress, calling upon her by the pet-name of "Katchen"; or again he would taunt her with her unkindness.

Such was the life and death of Gregory Orloff. The diamond to which his name was given although accepted by Catharine seems not to have been worn by her as a personal ornament. It was mounted in the Imperial Sceptre where it has ever since remained undisturbed. In its latter state of tranquil splendor it differs signally from the Regent whose European career, as we have seen, has been a singularly stormy one. As the sceptre is used only at coronations the history of the Orloff becomes one of long repose and seclusion, diversified by transient re-entrances into grandeur as successive Czars appear upon the scene to be crowned.

The most singular coronation which has ever been performed was probably that which followed the death of Catharine and preceded the consecration of her son and successor. Catharine died in 1797 after a reign of thirty-five years. But before she could be buried there was a ceremony to be performed, the like of which had never been seen.

Her son Paul, a taciturn individual who seems never to have forgotten his father's miserable death, performed an expiatory coronation in his honor, seeing that that ceremony had been neglected in Peter's life. For this purpose the body of the long-dead Czar was disinterred and was dressed in the Imperial robes. The ornaments of the coronation which had been fetched expressly from Moscow for the purpose were then disposed about the mouldering figure. It must have been a grisly sight—the crowned skeleton of the murdered Peter lying beside his wife's body with Orloff's diamond banefully glittering on his bony hand. Nor was this all. With a genius for grim appropriateness the new Czar summoned the two surviving murderers of his father to attend as chief mourners. These were Prince Baratinsky and Alexèy Orloff. The former overcome by the horror of his recollections fainted away many times; but Orloff, with iron indifference, stood four hours bearing the pall of the man he had strangled with his own hands thirty-five years before. After performing this public penance both men were banished from Russia.

The coronation of a sovereign is always a stately ceremony; but the installation of the Czars of Russia is elaborate almost beyond description. The ceremonial invariably followed is that used at the coronation of Peter the Great and his Empress. The ritual is largely religious, as the Czar is Head of the Church as well as Emperor. The sceptre of course plays an important part and is taken up and put down a bewildering number of times. The following extract from a work entirely devoted to the explanation of the many comings and goings and uprisings and downsittings will give a slight idea of what a performance the coronation is: