rs, red and blue, stood in two double lines,
drawn up along the principal streets which led from the Parliament House
to the Imperial. The crowd pressed and tossed and cheered; all the
windows, open wide, swarmed with heads; people looked on from every
balcony. A shot thundered from Fort Wenceslas on the sea; the emperor
returned; the grenadiers presented arms in company after company....

* * * * *

The lancers lead the van, blue and white, with streaming pennants at the
points of their lances, six squadrons of them. The whole strength of the
throne-guards, white, with breastplates of glittering gold flashing in
the sunlight above the black satin skins of the stallions, ride halberd
on thigh, surrounding the gently swaying state-carriages, scintillating
with rich gilding and bright crystal and two of them crowned with the
imperial crown, with teams of six and eight plumed greys. The horses
foam over their bits, impatient, nervously pawing the ground, prancing
because of the slow, ceremonious pace along the blinding, flagged
roadway. In the first coach, the master of ceremonies, the Count of
Threma; in the second, with the crown and the team of eight--and the
roar of the cheering rises from behind the hedge of soldiers--the
emperor, his uniform all gold, his robes of scarlet and ermine, his
crown upon his head. It is the only time that the people have seen their
emperor wear his crown.

And they cheer. But the emperor makes no acknowledgment: through the
glass of the coach he looks out, to left and right in turns, at the
crowd, with a proud smile of self-consciousness and victory; and his
face, full of race, full of force, cold with will, proud with authority,
is inaccessible in its smile as that of a Roman emperor on his triumphal
entry.

It is a triumphal entry, this return from the Parliament House to his
Imperial: a triumph over that which they denied him and upon which he
has now laid his heavy hand, showing them all that his mere will can
bend them to his word and purpose. And the cheers rise louder and louder
from that capricious crowd, restrained like a woman by a ruler whom it
now adores for his strength and admires for his imperial might, upon
which he leans, as he passes from the Parliament House to his own
palace, as though it were a whole army that lived upon his nod; and
louder and louder, louder and louder the cheers ring out that sunny
afternoon over the marble houses;