to the people who surrounded her. This explains the number of her
enemies and the antagonism to which her mere presence anywhere gave
rise. She knew very well that it would be very hard, if not impossible,
for her to overcome certain prejudices existing against her. Instead,
however, of trying to make for herself friends in other circles than
purely aristocratic ones, she applied herself to wound those in whom she
saw adversaries, and to discourage her friends by her utter disregard of
the warnings that the latter sometimes thought it their duty to give to
her. Her relations with the Empress Dowager had begun by being very
cordial and affectionate, and it was she who had proposed to the Czar to
take their abode in the Anitchkoff Palace with his mother, until their
own apartments in the Winter Palace had been got ready for them. The
arrangement had not been a successful one, and it is probable that Marie
Feodorowna would have got on better later on with her daughter-in-law
had the two ladies not lived under the same roof for about half a year.
As it was they grew to know each other “not wisely, but too well,” and
the result was profound contempt on one side and sullen anger on the
other. Servants’ gossip did the rest; and the two incidents which I have
already described, concerning the Crown Jewels and the liturgy, added
the last drop of venom in a cup already full to overflowing. The Dowager
began to criticize discreetly the young Empress, together with some of
her intimate friends. These did not scruple to repeat what they had
heard to their own near chums, and soon it became common property. The
Grand Duchesses took their cue from Marie Feodorowna, and in an
underhand way lamented over the failings of “dear Alexandra,” her
coldness, her want of politeness, and so forth, helping her in the mean
while as much as they could to accentuate the shortcomings of an
attitude which very soon came to displease everybody, even the people
who had been the most enthusiastic about the young Empress.
As a proof of this fact I will relate a little incident which, at the
time it occurred, proved the subject of much gossip in some select
circles of St. Petersburg society. During one of the first receptions
held at the Winter Palace, after the marriage of Nicholas II., there
made her appearance an old lady who for the sake of convenience we shall
call Madame A. She wished to be presented to the new Empress, an honor
to which her own position, together with that of her late husband, gave
her every right, besides the fact that she was one of the few ladies
left in the capital who had adhered to the old Russian custom of keeping
open house for her friends, and whose _salon_ was a social authority in
its way. The Empress, upon being shown the list of the people about to
be presented to her, wanted to know who they were, and, seeing near her
her aunt, the Grand-Duchess Marie Pawlowna, the wife of the Grand-Duke
Wladimir, asked her whether Madame A. was or was not a person of
importance. The Grand Duchess, who for reasons of her own disliked the
latter, replied to her niece:
“Oh, she is an old frump. Give her your hand to kiss, and she will be
satisfied.”
Now this was the one thing which would not have satisfied Madame A. at
all, who considered herself entitled to quite special consideration.
Alexandra Feodorowna, believing her aunt, executed the latter’s advice
to the letter. She extended her much-bejeweled fingers to the astonished
old lady, and then coolly turned her back upon her and passed on
without having said one single word. The scandal was immense, so immense
that the whole ballroom rang with it within a few minutes, and one of
the Empress’s ladies in waiting actually went up to her and tried to
enlighten her as to the extent of the enormity which she had committed,
advising her at the same time to seek out the irate Madame A. and to
make her some kind of apology, under the pretext that she had not heard
her name when it had been mentioned to her.
Alexandra Feodorowna in her turn, and with a certain amount of reason,
became furious against the Grand-Duchess Marie Pawlowna for having thus
led her into a snare, and, boiling with rage, she crossed the room, went
up to where Madame A. was discussing with volubility, together with some
of her friends, the slight to which she had been subjected, and told her
quite loudly:
“I am sorry, Madame, not to have treated you with the respect to which
you are entitled, but it was the Grand-Duchess Marie Pawlowna, my aunt,
who had advised me to do it.”
One may imagine the effect produced by this short sentence, which,
instead of soothing the ruffled feelings of Madame A., added to her
indignation. She turned round and replied quite distinctly, so that all
the people standing near her heard her plainly:
“_Ce n’est pas à l’aide d’une trahison, Madame, que l’on excuse une
impolitesse!_” (“It is not with the help of a treachery, Madame, that
one can excuse a rudeness”).
And making a deep courtesy to the discomfited Sovereign, Madame A.
proudly retired and drove away from the Palace, leaving the Empress with
the consciousness that in the space of five short minutes she had
contrived to make for herself two mortal enemies.
The whole of the Imperial Family took up the cause of the Grand-Duchess
Marie Pawlowna. The latter’s husband, the Grand-Duke Wladimir, went to
the Emperor and complained bitterly of the conduct of Alexandra
Feodorowna. The other Grand Duchesses declared that, dating from that
day, they would have nothing to do with her, except when the necessities
of etiquette compelled them to appear at Court, but that personal
relations with a person capable of such a grave piece of indiscretion
were quite out of the question. The Grand-Duchess Marie swore that she
had never meant to advise her niece to show herself rude to such a
respectable personage as Madame A.; that her words had been a mere joke,
to which she had never imagined that any importance could be attached,
and that it had been a cruel thing to denounce her in such a ruthless
way to the worst gossip and most malicious tongue in St. Petersburg.
Even the Dowager Empress expressed herself as shocked beyond words at
her daughter-in-law’s behavior, but when she had tried to speak with the
latter on the subject Alexandra Feodorowna had exclaimed that she
recognized the right of no one to criticize her actions, and forthwith
produced for her mother-in-law’s edification a caricature which she had
drawn of the Emperor in swaddling-clothes, seated at a dinner-table in a
high-backed chair, with his uncles and aunts standing around him, and
threatening him with their fingers, adding that she was not going to
follow the example of her spouse, and that if he chose to forget before
his relatives that he was the Emperor of All the Russias, she would not
do so for one single minute. After this the conversation came to an end,
as was to be expected, but its consequences survived, with a vengeance
into the bargain.
Of course incidents of the kind could not be productive of good
relations. It did not take a long while before the general public,
which, at that time, looked very much for its inspirations toward the
Imperial Family, had come to the conclusion that the young Empress was a
capricious, rude, and most disagreeable kind of person to whom it was
preferable to give a wide berth. Once this legend had been transferred
into the domain of history, every action, every word, every gesture of
Alexandra Feodorowna was watched with attentive and critical eyes,
always ready to make capital out of all her mistakes and to amplify all
her errors into crimes. The fact of her having no son added to the
resentful feelings of the nation against her, and that of her
undisguised German sympathies did not contribute to make her popular.
She in her turn, angry with her family, furious with St. Petersburg
society, unable to seek friends among the Russian people, all of whom
seemed in her inexperienced and prejudiced eyes to be more or less
savage, set herself a task to show her contempt and dislike to those
persons whom she had found so ready to throw stones against her on
occasions when her conscience had told her that she did not deserve the
insult. She retired more and more into the seclusion and privacy of her
home at Tsarskoye Selo, and she announced to whoever wished to hear her
that she did not see why she should spend her money in giving balls and
entertaining a society that seemed to have made up its mind to insult
her on every possible occasion. The words were repeated, and immediately
taken up by the public in the light of another affront. One declared
that for a penniless Hessian Princess to talk about “her money” was, to
say the least, ridiculous, and one added that she ought to remember that
it was part of the duties of a Russian Empress to entertain her
subjects and to give them some pleasures in return for their fidelity.
Such was the position after Alexandra Feodorowna had been married three
or four years. She might still at that time, had she attempted it in
earnest, won back at least the respect if not the sympathies of the
Russian nation. But to do so she would have had to bend down from the
height of the Throne upon which she was seated, and to make some efforts
to clear the misunderstandings which had arisen between her, her family,
and her subjects. Unfortunately for her, the haughty Princess believed
so firmly that she had been sinned against without having the least sin
to her own credit that this “injustice,” as she called it, in the
world’s judgments of her personality made her rebellious, and, not being
clever enough either to forgive or to disdain it, she could find nothing
else to do but to seek to revenge herself upon imaginary wrongs by
making herself guilty of real ones.
VIII
SORROW AND UNEXPECTED CONSOLATION
It was not only her family and St. Petersburg society with whom the
Empress could not agree. Her relations with her husband were also not of
the best during the first years of her married life. Later on, when
Alexandra Feodorowna had fallen into the hands of the clever gang of
adventurers whose tool she was to remain until the final catastrophe
which drove her from her Throne had taken place, she contrived to get
hold of the feeble mind of Nicholas II., and to influence him
absolutely, thanks to his love for his children, especially for his son.
During the first five years or so that followed upon his marriage the
Czar, though he never quarreled with his wife, yet thought far less
about her than he did about his mistress, the dancer Mathilde
Krzesinska, a Pole of extreme intelligence, little beauty, but enormous
attraction. Their friendship had begun when Nicholas was but a boy, or
about that, rumor would have it, though I have reason for knowing
[Illustration: THE CZAR]
that in this rumor was mistaken, as happens so often to the old lady,
that the dancer had been chosen by the Empress Marie herself as a fit
friend for her eldest son. The fact was that this liaison had started
almost immediately after the Grand Duke’s return from his journey round
the world, which had had such a dramatic incident to enliven it in
Japan, when a fanatic had attempted to take the life of the Heir to the
Russian Throne, inflicting upon him a deep wound with his sword.
The Cesarewitsch had seen Mademoiselle Krzesinska on the stage of the
Marinsky Theater, and had been very much impressed by her talent and
grace. He had asked to be introduced to her, and had forthwith carried
her off to supper at a fashionable restaurant called Cubat, where all
the _jeunesse dorée_ of St. Petersburg used to meet, eat, drink, and be
merry. This supper, in which had taken part several of Nicholas’s
friends, officers in the same Hussar regiment where he was a captain, as
well as one or two ladies of great beauty and doubtful reputation, had
ended in a scandal, which for several weeks had been almost the only
subject of discussion in the aristocratic _salons_ of the capital. The
company had been enjoying itself so much that glasses and plates had
been broken; when, at two o’clock in the morning, the owner of the
restaurant had ventured to suggest that it would be high time the
entertainment came to an end, he had been sent to mind his own business.
This the poor man would have been but too glad to do, but police
regulations were very strict at that time, and he knew that if a patrol
should see light in his windows from the outside that he would be fined
heavily, no matter who had elected to remain in his establishment after
the curfew had sounded.
This was precisely what happened.
A police officer walked up and knocked at the door of the private room
where the Heir to the Russian Throne and his companions were disporting
themselves, and ordered them to get out. The Grand Duke’s aide-de-camp
did not care to disclose the identity of his master, so he came out
alone and tried to remonstrate with the man, asking him to give them
another half-hour to finish their supper and pay for it. The officer
refused and tried to force his way into the room, but was violently
thrust aside. He had not the right to enforce his authority against a
colonel in the army, which was the rank of the aide-de-camp, so he
withdrew and telephoned to the Prefect of the town, General Wahl. The
latter, who was an officious busybody, thought it a splendid occasion to
assert his authority. He immediately proceeded himself to Cubat, where,
in spite of the efforts made by the companions of the Grand Duke to keep
him out, he rushed into the room, to find himself confronted by the
Heir to the Throne. Nicholas became very angry and asked the General how
he dared intrude upon his privacy. Wahl, furious in his turn, retorted
that it was his duty to see that order was maintained in the capital, no
matter who was troubling it, upon which, in one of the uncontrollable
fits of rage to which he was sometimes subject, the Cesarewitsch seized
hold of a dish full of caviar which stood on the table and threw its
contents in the face of Wahl. A scene of indescribable disorder
followed. At last Prince Bariatinsky, one of the generals in waiting on
the Czar, who had accompanied the young Grand Duke during the latter’s
journey round the world, was sent for. He succeeded in putting an end to
an incident which reflected credit upon none of those who had taken part
in it.
The next day Alexander III. was apprised of what had taken place.
History does not say what he told his son, but it was supposed that it
had not been anything in the way of praise, because there was nothing
that the Emperor hated more than a drunken brawl, and it must have been
very painful for him to find that his Heir had become involved in one.
But when General Wahl arrived, full of complaints and indignation at the
treatment to which he had been subjected, the Monarch expressed to him
his entire disapproval of his conduct, saying that he had had no right
to intrude upon the privacy of the Grand Duke, and that he ought not to
have forgotten the immense difference of rank which existed between him
and the future Emperor of Russia. Wahl did not require to be told twice
the same thing, and in the future he never attempted to interfere with
the pleasures of any member of the Imperial Family.
People who were present at this ill-fated supper told afterward, when
relating all the incidents which had made it a memorable one, that
Nicholas wished to do something worse than pour the contents of a
caviar-dish on General Wahl’s head, but that Mademoiselle Krzesinska had
thrown herself between them. True or not, it is certain that after this
night the Grand Duke took to visiting the beautiful dancer in her home,
and very soon their relations became an established fact. She bore him
two sons, which gave her distinct advantages over all the other
flirtations in which her Imperial lover indulged from time to time,
flirtations which she was far too clever and careful to notice. What she
aspired to afterward was to become a power in the land, a _Maîtresse de
Roi_, such as had been seen at the French Court during the reigns of the
last Bourbons. Her Polish propensity for intrigue coming to her help,
she very soon contrived to make for herself an excellent position in
the world as well as to earn a considerable fortune. She was a very
reasonable, matter-of-fact woman; she knew very well that Nicholas had
to marry, whether he liked it or not, and her only preoccupation, if we
are to believe all that was related in St. Petersburg at the time, was
whether he should marry a clever or a stupid woman. It is not difficult
to guess the one she would have preferred had the choice been left to
her discretion.
When the betrothal of the Cesarewitsch with the Princess Alix of Hesse
was announced Mademoiselle Krzesinska, far from objecting to it, applied
herself, on the contrary, to persuading him that he had done quite right
and that he could not have chosen a better wife. She imagined that the
placid German temperament of the bride-to-be would look with innocent
eyes on the continuation of her intrigue with Nicholas, in which
supposition she was vastly mistaken, because Alice, though she did not
care for the husband she had been compelled to marry, did not mean to
let him wander away from the conjugal home in search of a happiness she
believed herself quite capable of alone procuring for him. She tried to
separate the Grand Duke from the clever dancer who held him in her
bondage, and of course she failed.
Nicholas kept up his former habits of going to see Mademoiselle
Krzesinska whenever he had the time to do so; what was even worse, he
continued to consult her on many matters which he never discussed with
his wife. The latter became very unhappy, and it was then that even her
affection for her children was not sufficient to prevent her from
uttering aloud her despair at having been obliged to leave her dear
Darmstadt for a country where everything and everybody conspired against
her and her peace of mind, and where she could not even win the love of
the husband who had been imposed upon her.
Among the few people whom she used to see more frequently than others
was the Montenegrin Princess Stana, who had been married to Duke George
of Leuchtenberg, with whom she had led a most unhappy, uncanny sort of
existence. Stana, like all the Montenegrin daughters of King Nicholas,
was a charming and attractive woman, clever into the bargain. In spite
of her unhappy conjugal experiences she had grown very fond of Russia,
and especially of her position as a member of the Russian Imperial
Family. She was very willing to divorce the miserable husband to whom
she had been united, who had insulted and outraged her without the least
compunction from the very first day of their marriage; but she would
have liked to find another one whose affection, and especially whose
worldly situation, were such that her future would be assured on even
more brilliant lines than the present. Her elder sister, Princess
Militza, was the wife of the Grand-Duke Peter Nicholaievitch, whose
brother was that Grand-Duke Nicholas who was later on to acquire such a
reputation as Commander-in-chief of the Russian armies during the first
months of the present war. Grand-Duke Nicholas was not considered as a
marriageable man, being bound by ties of close friendship since a good
number of years with an attractive woman, Madame Bourénine.
Nevertheless, Princess Stana made up her mind to marry him, an
enterprise which seemed the more hopeless that it was against the canons
of the Greek Orthodox Church for two sisters to marry two brothers. As
we have seen, her sister was Grand-Duke Nicholas’s sister-in-law.
This, however, did not much trouble the determined Stana, but she knew
very well that it would be quite impossible for her to succeed in her
designs unless she managed to enlist on her side the sympathies of
somebody strong enough to protect her and to lend her the support which
she needed. It was useless to think of the Empress Dowager, because the
latter had never looked kindly upon the Montenegrin Princesses, to whom
she had been very good at the time that they were being brought up in
the Smolny Convent in St. Petersburg, and who had rewarded her with the
basest ingratitude later on. The Emperor was a mere puppet in the hands
of his advisers, and these, Stana knew but too well, would be against
any idea of her becoming the wife of Nicholas Nicholaievitch. Remained
the young Empress, to whom no one to that day had ever dared to apply
for anything, who had been considered by general consent as not being
worthy of any attention or consideration. Stana imagined that any proofs
of respect which she might give to her were bound to be more appreciated
than they would have been under different circumstances. She forthwith
proceeded to lay siege with great care and tact to the heart and the
sympathies of Alexandra Feodorowna.
At first her advances were met with rebuff; then gradually, seeing how
attentive and full of deference her cousin showed herself in respect to
her person, the young Empress began to thaw; and soon a friendship, the
more surprising that the two ladies did not seem to have anything
whatever in common in their respective characters--even a close
friendship--established itself between them, and the miserable wife of
Nicholas II. poured out the sorrows which racked her heart to the
willing ears of Stana Leuchtenberg, who, in her turn, related all her
own misfortunes. At last Alexandra interested herself so much in the
welfare of this other victim of an unhappy marriage that she exerted
all her influence to persuade the Emperor to grant her the permission to
sue for a divorce. At the same time she applied herself to invite the
Grand-Duke Nicholas as often as possible either at Tsarskoye Selo or at
Livadia, and to make him meet there the beautiful Stana Leuchtenberg.
The expected happened, and soon poor Madame Bourénine was forgotten, and
the betrothal of the Empress’s two protégés was announced, much to the
indignation of the man in the street, who did not approve of it by any
means.
The Grand-Duke Nicholas was in his way just as ambitious a man as the
fair Montenegrin he had married. To the Crimea they both repaired as
soon as the divorce of the Princess had been pronounced. He knew very
well the weakness which characterized his nephew, the Czar, and he would
have dearly liked to become the latter’s chief adviser and even his
Prime Minister. He therefore favored his new wife’s intimacy with the
Empress, so that the couple were often seen at Tsarskoye Selo, much more
so, in fact, than any other members of the Imperial Family.
Now the Grand Duke had one weakness. He believed in spiritualism, in
turning tables, and all kinds of superstitious extravagances. The
Empress’s leanings had also since some time been directed toward the
same subject, but she had felt afraid to speak about it, knowing very
well that this would not be looked upon with lenient eyes by the Czar or
by his mother. When she discovered, however, that Nicholas
Nicholaievitch did not feel in the least ashamed if he were caught
trying to communicate, through the medium of a table or of a pencil,
with the inhabitants of the other world, she confided to him her great
desire to do the same thing. The Grand Duke replied that nothing could
be easier. They held several séances to which the Emperor also came,
attracted by the descriptions which his cousin had made to him. Nicholas
Nicholaievitch promised the Empress that he would bring to her a famous
French medium called Philippe, who would most certainly make her witness
most extraordinary performances in regard to the evocation of the
spirits of people dead long before.
Alexandra Feodorowna was delighted. She had already derived great
comfort from her intercourse with her cousins, and her feeling of
affection for Stana had acquired considerable warmth since the beginning
of their friendship. Moreover, she knew that the Grand-Duke Nicholas was
considered the strong man in the Romanoff family, and she realized that
to have him on her side would be a distinct advantage for her, and that
his support might help her to overcome many difficulties. Therefore she
appreciated very much all the acts of attention which both Stana and
her husband were fond of pouring upon her. When Nicholas told her that
he would gratify her wish to see a real medium she was more than
delighted. She did not foresee whither this fatal introduction was to
lead her, nor realize the ill turn that her cousin was doing her by
giving her an opportunity of indulging her tastes for the supernatural,
to which she was to owe so many of the misfortunes which were to assail
her in later years, and which were to play such an important part in the
tragedy that ended with her downfall. She was looking for the
consolation of the moment without thinking of the possibility of the
catastrophe of the morrow.
IX