Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/234

 CHAPTER XVIII

ONSIEUR RADZIANKO, as is known, was elected President of the third Duma, and again of the fourth, that is to say, he was President at the moment of the Revolution. He married a Princess Galitzine, and was formerly in the Chevaliers-Gardes, considered the first Russian regiment. Adored by the peasants on his great estates, he was much in touch with the Zemstvo Party, the friend of the peasants. A great friend of Sir George Buchanan, our late Ambassador, his dream for his country was to have a ministry appointed by the Tzar, though outside the Duma, responsible to and dependent upon possessing and retaining its confidence.

The Empress, in the Palace, breathlessly awaited the result, devoured with anxiety as to the issue which none of them had known how to prevent.

The "Saint," seriously alarmed by the revelations of Miliukoff—the only topic of conversation in the capital—thought it prudent to make himself scarce again, and departed on a so-called "pilgrimage."

The Empress was in a terrible state, not only on account of the interpellation, but because 2em