The Holy City is preparing for the reception that is to take place tomorrow.  They are hammering and pounding in all the streets and on all the squares.  Most of the houses here stand alone, in the centre of a garden or court.  Large tribunes for spectators have been erected in these spaces.  In several of these I counted three thousand numbered seats.  Before the houses themselves, moreover, small platforms with chairs have been erected, protected by linen awnings, decorated with tapestries, carpets and flowers.  There must be at least several hundred thousand seats, so that there can be no crowd.  Only those who cannot pay the few kopecks,[39] the Tschornoi Narod, or “the black brood of the people,” will form the movable mass, and the police will have to restrain them.

All palaces and churches have laths nailed on their architectonic lines, upon which the lamps for the festive illuminations are to be fastened.  The Giant Ivan, which will speak from the mouths of twenty-five large bells, bears upon its golden dome a crown formed of lamps, surmounted by the great glittering cross, which the French pulled down with immense toil and danger, and which the Russians victoriously reinstated.  As an atonement for the offense, they laid one thousand guns of the godless enemy at the feet of Ivan, where Count Morny can see them to this day.

Half of the population of the city are in the streets, looking about, and they are allowed to go everywhere, even in the Kremlin.

Every day six-and eight-horse teams, mostly dark gray and black, which are going to convey the state coaches of the Empress and the Grand-Duchesses, are going to and fro from the Kremlin to Petrofskoy.  Strangely enough, the outriders sit on the right front horses.  An equerry of the Guards walks by each horse and leads it by the bridle.  Yesterday their Excellencies carried a fearfully heavy canopy, supported by thick gold posts, through the salons and over the stairs of the palace.  The aides-de-camp walk by the side of it, and balance it by golden cords.

The state coaches, most wonderful products of former centuries, have been drawn out of their semi-obscurity in the Arsenal, where they have rested twenty-eight years.  The oldest are entirely without springs, are suspended by leather straps six feet long over a tongue twenty feet long and correspondingly thick, which is so bent that the coach almost reaches the ground.  Those of the Empresses are ornamented with diamonds and jewels.  It will hardly be possible to use the oldest.  There is, further, a kind of house on wheels, made of gold, velvet, and crystal, which Peter the Great received as a present from England, and compared to which a thirty-six pounder is but a child’s toy.  In short, everything is life and activity here, in expectation of the volleys of cannon which will announce tomorrow from the old gate towers of the Kremlin the solemn entrance of the Czar.