Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/383

 Rh person present—motionless, as though stricken with a kind of stupor. At a slightly later date, Margeret and Fletcher were to be equally struck by this detail. When the Tsar made his entry, the silence over that crowd of officials of every rank, and the serried lines of guards, in long white velvet or satin gowns, and tall white fur caps, half soldiers and half Levites, their gold chains crossed over their breasts, their gleaming axes lifted as though to strike, was so intense that an onlooker, closing his eyes, might have fancied the Palace utterly deserted.

Certainly, if the Sovereign's dwelling struck the traveller as being unworthy of its owner, his courtiers, both as to numbers and splendour, exceeded any to be seen in other countries. A perfect swarm of gentlemen, all glittering with gold and gems, crowded each other to suffocation within the narrow limits of the presence-chamber, overflowed on to the outer landing and the staircase, and filled all the approaches to the building.

Let us consider the elements which composed this gorgeous Court. In the Russian of the sixteenth century the word Court (dvor) had two meanings. It was used to designate the Sovereign's residence, and also to describe the various services centralized in it, and connected alike with the monarch's person and with the necessities of the State. The Sovereign lived in the upper story (vierkh) of the Palace; the rest of the edifice and the buildings connected with it were occupied by various officials who worked in different offices or departments (prikazes), and were employed either in the business of keeping up the Court or in administering the affairs of the country. A century later, Kotochikhine counted forty of these prikazes, divided into chambers (palaty), and forming as many independent ministries—the town prikaze, the Customs prikaze, the Chief Court prikaze, which last fulfilled the functions of the present Court Minister. Yet the service of the Court was in the hands of a number of special departments—the prikaze for supplies, or jiteïnyï dvor, for the Court table; the kormovoï dvor for bread; the khlebnyï dvor for the cellars, the wardrobe, the stables. The wardrobe department, which had to clothe, not the Sovereign only, but, on certain occasions, the whole of the Court, both great dignitaries and ordinary officials, had its own workshop, the masterskaïa palata, and huge warehouses, and its work was no sinecure.

The posts connected with the Court were very numerous. Some were very ancient, others of quite modern growth. Nestor mentions the stolniki (dapiferi), whose duty it was to offer the dishes, afterwards cut up and distributed by the kraïtchyï and