… Nicholas was seated at the table of honor, which was trimmed with magnificent garlands of medeola. At one moment he was listening now to some gracious remark from Madame Faure, seated on his right, at the next to the velvety baritone of the president, speaking to the empress. The reflections from the glasses and the glittering array of silver dazzled the guests… At the dessert the president stood up, raised his glass, and declared, "The presence of Your Majesty among us, acclaimed by a whole people, has sealed the bonds that unite our two countries in harmonious endeavor and in a mutual confidence in their destinies. The union between a powerful empire and an industrious republic… Fortified by a proven fidelity… As a spokesman for the whole nation, offer to Your Majesty… For the greatness of his reign… For the happiness of Her Majesty, the Empress… I raise my glass in honor of His Majesty, the Emperor Nicholas, and Her Majesty, the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna."

The band of the Republican Guard struck up the Russian national anthem… And the grand gala at the Opéra that evening was an apotheosis.

Preceded by two torchbearers, the imperial couple ascended the staircase. They seemed to be moving past a living cascade: the white curves of the women's shoulders; the blossoming flowers on their corsages; the perfumed brilliance of the hairstyles; the glittering of jewels on bare flesh; all this against a background of uniforms and tails. The mighty cry "Long live the Emperor!" almost raised the majestic ceiling to the sky with its echoes, mingling it with the sky… When at the end of the performance the orchestra launched into the "Marseillaise," the tsar turned to the president and gave him his hand.

My grandmother switched off the lamp, and we spent several minutes in the dark, the time it took to let all the midges fly away that had been courting a luminous death beneath the shade. Little by little our eyes began to see again. The stars reformed their constellations. The Milky Way became phosphorescent. And in a corner of our balcony, among the intermingled stems of sweet peas, the fallen bacchante gave us her stone smile.