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50 THE ORLOFF.
ing
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
Bara-tinsky and Alexey Orloff. The former overcome by the horror of
his recollections fainted away many times; but Otloff, 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,
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