As we were coming back from our usual drive this morning, so dense was the crowd that the chauffeur was obliged to stop in one of the rather narrow streets in the Yakimanskaïa quarter. The crowd consisted of humble folk and peasants from the district who had come into the city to shop or in the hope of seeing the Czar. All at once there was a loud shout: “The Heir!... The Heir!...” The crowd surged towards us, surrounded us, and came up so close that our way was blocked, and we, so to speak, found ourselves prisoners of these _moujiks_, workmen and shopkeepers who struggled and fought, shouted, gesticulated, and behaved like lunatics in order to get a better view of the Czarevitch. By degrees some of the women and children grew bolder, mounted the steps of the car, thrust their arms over the doors, and when they succeeded in touching the boy they yelled out triumphantly: “I’ve touched him!... I’ve touched the Heir!...”
Alexis Nicolaïevitch, frightened at these exuberant demonstrations, was sitting far back in the car. He was very pale, startled by this sudden popular manifestation, which was taking extravagant forms which were quite novel to him. He recovered himself, however, when he saw the kindly smiles of the crowd, but he remained embarrassed at the attention bestowed upon him, not knowing what to say or do.
Personally, I was speculating, not without considerable anxiety, how all this would end, for I knew that no police regulations are issued for the Czarevitch’s drives as neither the time nor the route can be fixed beforehand. I began to fear that we might meet with some accident in the middle of this unruly crowd swarming round us.
To my relief two huge _gorodovy_ (policemen) came up, puffing and blowing, shouting and storming. The crowd displayed the unquestioning and resigned obedience of the _moujik_. It began to waver, then slowly drifted away. I then told Derevenko, who was following in another car, to go ahead, and by degrees we succeeded in getting clear.
_Friday, August 21st._--Their Majesties, before returning to Tsarskoïe-Selo, decided to visit the Troïtsa Monastery, the most celebrated sanctuary in Russia after the world-famed _Laure_ of Kiev. The train took us as far as the little station of Serghievo, from which we reached the monastery by car. Perched on a hill, it would be taken for a fortified city from a distance if the bright-coloured towers and gilded domes of its thirteen churches did not betray its true purpose. In the course of its history this rampart of Orthodoxy has had to resist some formidable assaults, the most famous being the sixteen months’ siege by an army of thirty thousand Poles at the beginning of the seventeenth century.