The Grand-Duke Nicholas kept his word, and one afternoon he brought to
Tsarskoye Selo the famous Philippe, about whom his wife had spoken so
often and with such enthusiasm to the young Empress. Before relating
what followed upon this hasty and ill-advised introduction of an
adventurer in the family circle of the Czar, it may not be out of place
to say a few words concerning this personage, as well as to give a short
description of his person.
Philippe was a Frenchman who, if all that has been related about him is
true, had come to grief in his native land, to which he had thought it
wiser to bid good-by for a time at least. He had spent several years in
Germany, studying at German universities (at least he said so) and had
given a great deal of attention to occultism and everything connected
with it. Why he came to St. Petersburg no one ever knew, and though he
has been accused of having tried from the very first months of his
arrival in Russia to get introduced to the Sovereigns, yet I do not
personally believe in this part of the story, because at that time no
one suspected Alexandra Feodorowna or Nicholas II. of being interested
in the supernatural. What is more likely is that he only attempted to
get acquainted with the aristocratic circles of the capital, some of
which were known to be attracted by these manifestations which begin by
turning tables and end in more or less genuine hysteria. Later on when
it became known that the Emperor and Empress themselves had given a
welcome to the spiritualistic doctrines which Philippe preached, it is
probable that the idea was suggested to him, by people who realized what
capital might be made out of this circumstance, that he might come to
acquire political influence, if he would but make use of his science to
enslave the weak persons who had come to believe in him.
Personal ambition and vanity did the rest, combined with a good deal of
German money, cleverly and judiciously spent in the furtherance of deep
schemes, the real purport of which he was never allowed to suspect. He
was encouraged to consider himself as a personage of great importance,
and one upon whose shoulders rested some of the responsibilities which,
properly speaking, belonged to the Czar alone. He was clever, bright,
and assimilated very quickly all that he heard or saw, and knew how to
turn to the best advantage every possible circumstance with which his
personal welfare or interest was connected. As soon as he found himself
in the presence of Alexandra Feodorowna he understood how easy it would
be for him to get hold of a mind which he judged at once, and this quite
rightly, not to be well balanced. He therefore played upon it; he
ministered to it; he took advantage of it and of its vagaries; and he
soon acquired over the young Sovereign an influence such as no one
before him had ever wielded, and such as no one in the future was to
have, with the exception of the famous Raspoutine of evil memory.
At first Philippe proceeded with great caution--so great, indeed, as to
elude even the suspicious eyes of the Grand-Duke Nicholas, who, though
he had been instrumental in bringing this impostor to Court, yet would
not at all have liked to see him become influential there, and who
watched him very carefully during the séances which were held every
Saturday evening at Tsarskoye Selo. Even the suspicious eyes of the
Grand-Duke Nicholas could not detect anything the least dangerous in his
manner of proceeding. Philippe acted the medium to perfection. He used
to go into regular trances, during which he replied to the various
questions put to him with more or less accuracy; he never could be
detected, once he was awake again, as having the slightest knowledge or
remembrance of what had taken place while he had been asleep. Several
times he prophesied with such exactitude that it seemed marvelous.
On one of these occasions he announced to the small circle assembled to
listen to him in the Empress’s boudoir that a serious misfortune was
threatening the State through the death of one of its most important
functionaries. He was still plunged in the hypnotic sleep during which
he made this startling announcement when Count Lamsdorff, who occupied
the position of Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, arrived at
Tsarskoye Selo and asked to be received by the Emperor on urgent and
important business. He had come to communicate to the Monarch the news
of the sudden death that same evening of the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, Count Mourawieff. Of course this set the seal to Philippe’s
reputation as a prophet. Afterward some meddlesome people assumed that
he had become aware of the sad event before he had left St. Petersburg
to proceed to the Imperial country Palace by one of those singular
accidents which happen sometimes in life, and that he had very
intelligently made use of this knowledge during the trance in which he
had pretended to be plunged. True or not, the story circulated freely,
and was repeated everywhere, but the people who ought to have been the
most interested in it did not, of course, hear it. On the contrary, the
influence of the impostor was considerably strengthened by the incident,
even in regard to the Grand-Duke Nicholas, who from that moment began
himself to consult Philippe in various matters. Then the Grand Duke had
to leave for the Crimea, where he usually spent part of the year, on
account of the health of the Grand Duchess, which had never been of the
strongest, and he left Philippe in possession of the field.
In spite of Nicholas Nicholaievitch’s absence, the séances with the
medium continued, and they became even longer and more frequent than had
been the case before. The Empress developed more and more interest in
their progress, and at last one day, when Philippe asked her whether she
would not try to be sent to sleep by him in order to get rid of the
cruel headaches from which she suffered, she did not object; on the
contrary, expressed herself as quite willing to make the experiment.
Philippe, however, insisted on one condition, which was that he should
be left alone with her while it proceeded.
Here comes the surprising part of this singular business. Instead of
protesting against this pretension of the adventurer, Alexandra
Feodorowna accepted it as a matter of course, and, what is more
surprising even, she induced the Czar to give his consent. Philippe sent
her to sleep, with the result that her headaches really improved and
that she began to get into the habit of talking with him, either
willingly or unwillingly, about all the events of her daily life and of
consulting him whenever she thought that she found herself confronted by
any difficulty.
She confided to him--what he knew already--her passionate desire to
become the mother of a son, as well as the many disillusions of her
married life. Philippe encouraged her, and he was the first one who
suggested to her the advisability of taking an interest in public
affairs, instead of holding herself aloof from them, and to point out to
her the necessity which existed for her, in order to consolidate her
personal position, to try and acquire some influence over her husband’s
mind, and in this way to eliminate that of the Empress Dowager. When
Alexandra Feodorowna protested, the adventurer declared to her that he
had been sent from heaven to come to her help, that it had been
suggested to him by the invisible spirits which always inspired him to
go to Russia and to give her the benefit of his experience so as to
deliver her from her numerous enemies.
When she declared that she understood nothing about politics, he replied
that it was her duty to learn, and that if she did not find any one in
Russia willing to teach her, there was her own family in Germany who
would be but too glad to come to her rescue, together with their
knowledge of the art of government and of handling men and facts. He
added that this was the more indispensable that she was about to give
birth at last to the son she had been longing for since so many years,
and that this son would grow to be an honor to her, as well as the
greatest Sovereign Russia had ever known.
Poor infatuated Alexandra believed the adventurer, believed in him so
thoroughly that she imagined that she was really about to become a
mother once more, and solemnly announced the fact to the Emperor and to
the Imperial Family.
Great preparations were made for the auspicious event, and once more the
hopes that Nicholas II. might have at last an Heir to his Throne and
Crown were awakened. It is related that everything had been got ready,
that even the guns which were to announce the birth of a new member of
the Romanoff dynasty had been placed on the ramparts of the fortress of
SS. Peter and Paul to be fired as soon as the event had taken place,
when the suspicions of the Empress Dowager were awakened by the attitude
of her daughter-in-law as well as by her physical appearance. She began
to watch her, and to do so with the more care. The time for the latter’s
presumed confinement had passed without that confinement having
occurred. Alexandra Feodorowna was observed to be in tears, and her
nervous condition became almost alarming, but she refused to see a
doctor, and declared that she felt sure she would be better as soon as
the suspense under which she was laboring was over. She remained long
hours closeted alone with Philippe, who seemed to be the only man
capable of bringing some calm to her over-excited system.
Some member of the Court took upon himself the task of writing to the
Grand-Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch in the Crimea, advising him that
something had gone wrong with the Empress, and that Philippe was
concerned in it. One must give the Grand Duke his due. He had never
meant any harm to his cousin’s wife when he had brought the impostor to
Court. As we have seen, the latter had been most careful in his whole
demeanor while the Grand Duke had remained at hand to control his
conduct and his actions. This did not prevent him from rushing back to
St. Petersburg as soon as he heard of the strange doings which were
shaking the equanimity of the inhabitants of Tsarskoye Selo. He had no
sooner seen the Emperor and the Empress than he guessed what had really
occurred. He forthwith proceeded to tell the Monarch that the medical
attendants of Alexandra Feodorowna must see and examine her, whether
she liked it or not, because her state of health was a question which
did not interest her alone, but was of the utmost importance to the
whole country as well as to the dynasty. He hinted at certain gossip
which was going about, to the effect that it was the intention of the
Empress to palm off a supposed son on her husband and on his family.
Altogether he spoke so strongly that Nicholas II. became seriously
alarmed, and for once in his life asserted his authority and compelled
his wife to submit to a medical examination.
The result stupefied him as well as other people, because it was
ascertained that the hopes of motherhood of Alexandra Feodorowna had
only existed in her imagination; that there was no prospect whatever of
her giving to Russia that Heir for whose advent the whole country was so
eager. Of course the scandal was great, though an attempt was made to
soften it by the publication of an official bulletin stating that an
unfortunate accident had destroyed the hopes of the Imperial Family. For
those who had perforce to become aware of the true circumstances of this
whole adventure, the Empress remained under the shadow of a ridicule
which was to cling to her for a long time and was not forgotten even
when the present war broke out.
The Grand-Duke Nicholas had a stormy
[Illustration: THE GRAND-DUKE NICHOLAS]
interview with Philippe. The impostor pretended that he was not to
blame, that the Empress had misunderstood him altogether, and that he,
together with the rest of the world, had honestly believed in her
supposed hopes of maternity. But in the mean while it had been
discovered that during the séances which he had held at Tsarskoye Selo
he had mesmerized Alexandra Feodorowna, and abused the confidence she
had reposed in him by trying to worm out of her State secrets she was
believed to know. The Grand Duke kicked the man out of the Palace, and
told him that if he ever dared to set his foot in it again he would have
him sent to Siberia under escort. He proceeded to acquaint the Emperor
with all that he had discovered and to request the latter to issue
orders for the expulsion from Russia of the impostor who had thrown so
much ridicule on him as well as on the whole dynasty, who had acquired,
thanks to his underhand maneuvers, such a disastrous influence over the
mind of his Imperial Consort.
Philippe disappeared and was never seen any more. No one knew what
happened to him, or where he was sent, and no one troubled. He had been
a nine days’ wonder and he sank into oblivion, but the Empress’s mad
infatuation for him was not forgotten so easily. The more so because she
did not attempt to hide her grief at his removal, and bitterly
reproached the Grand-Duke Nicholas for his interference in a matter
which, as she declared, did not concern him. Angry words were exchanged
and the old intimacy which had existed between the Grand-Duchess Stana,
her husband, and Alexandra Feodorowna not only came to an end, but was
replaced by a hatred the more bitter that it had perforce to be
concealed under the veil of politeness and amiability. The Empress’s
nature, as we know already, was essentially a vindictive one, and the
insult, as she considered it, to which she had been subjected on the
part of Nicholas Nicholaievitch was to be avenged by her many years
later on the day when, thanks to her and to her new favorite,
Raspoutine, he was deprived of his position as Commander-in-chief of the
Russian armies in the field.
X
ANNA WYRUBEWA APPEARS ON THE SCENE AND HE SAW HER PASS
After the disastrous Philippe incident, the character of the Empress
Alexandra changed considerably. She became a sullen, morose, melancholy
woman, with a grudge against the world in general and the people with
whom she lived in particular. Her sisters-in-law, the Grand-Duchess
Xenia Alexandrowna and the Grand-Duchess Olga of Oldenburg, tried to
come to her help and to enliven her by attempting to bring her out of
the solitude in which she shut herself up, and if she would only have
responded to these efforts it is possible that the whole course of her
life might have run differently. But the Empress persisted in seeing
enemies in everyone of her relatives, and, instead of trying to break
through this wall of hostility with which she believed herself
surrounded, she used all her powers of persuasion to induce her husband
to take the same attitude of antagonism in regard to his family which
she had adopted herself. Of course this was not forgiven her.
Nicholas II.’s sisters, who loved him dearly, were affronted when they
discovered that their former intimate relations with their brother had
come to an end, and that for some reason or other he looked upon them
with suspicious eyes. Xenia simply shrugged her shoulders, and, being
very wisely advised by her husband, the Grand-Duke Alexander
Michaylovitch, who, like all the members of that branch of the Romanoff
family, was exceedingly intelligent, refrained from saying anything. But
Olga, who was of a more enterprising turn of mind, accosted the Czar one
day and talked to him quite seriously about the conduct of the Empress,
pointing out to him the harm which she was doing him by her rudeness
toward the members of the Imperial Family, and expressing the conviction
that times were sufficiently serious. This was during the Japanese war.
The Emperor listened to her, as he listened to everybody who spoke to
him, with courtesy and attention, but the only reply which she could
obtain from him was to the effect that the Empress was in a bad state of
health, that her nerves were quite unstrung, and that it would be wrong
to take anything she said or did too seriously.
“But you are not nervous or ill,” exclaimed the Grand Duchess. “How does
it come, then, that you avoid us, your sisters, and even our mother
just as much as does your wife. What have we done to you, except to love
you, for you to treat us as if we were strangers?”
Nicholas II. pulled his mustache, but would not explain himself further,
and Olga Alexandrowna had to own herself baffled.
The Empress heard of this conversation and it did not reconcile her to
her sisters-in-law. She was in that morbid state of mind which gives an
undue importance to the smallest incident which would not arrest for
five minutes the attention of any normal person. The predisposition to
insanity which existed in the Hesse-Darmstadt family had probably
something to do with her condition, because she most certainly suffered
from the mania of persecution; being a Sovereign, and a powerful one
into the bargain, she imagined that the best use she could make of her
unlimited power was to crush those in whom she persisted in seeing
enemies bent on her destruction.
Rumors had reached her ears that some members of the Imperial Family (it
had been the Grand-Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch, in fact) had said that
her place ought to be in a convent rather than on the Throne, and she
had immediately made out of the remark a desire on the part of her
kinsman to shut her up in a monastery, as had been done in the Middle
Ages with other Russian Czarinas, so as to give the Emperor the
possibility to marry another woman who could bear him a son.
The supposition was a preposterous one, because such an idea had never
crossed the Grand Duke’s mind, but it could not be driven away out of
the imagination of Alexandra Feodorowna. Hence her continual efforts to
estrange her husband from his people, and to keep him entirely in her
own hands, far away from any influence hostile to herself or to her
daughters. There was, after all, some method in her madness. As things
turned out, she was given several opportunities to exert her vengeful
feelings in regard to the Imperial Family by the conduct of a few of its
members.
I will here mention briefly two or three occasions when her intervention
caused any amount of trouble and brought upon her head storms of abuse
and indignation. The first one was the morganatic marriage of the
Grand-Duke Paul, the Emperor’s uncle. This event was brought about
principally through the want of tact and the stupidity of the people
concerned in it, and it would have been far better for the Empress not
to have interested herself in it at all, considering the fact that the
personages concerned in this affair were certainly beneath her notice.
The Grand Duke had been upon terms of intimate friendship with a lady
very well known in social circles of St. Petersburg, the wife of one of
the officers of the regiment of which he was the commander. The thing
had been going on for a number of years, and society had turned away its
head and affected not to notice it; the more so that the husband of the
lady in question seemed to ignore it, and to keep his eyes firmly closed
as to her indiscretions. But one fine day the Grand Duke thought to make
to Madame Pistolkors a present of some jewels which had belonged to his
mother first, and to his wife afterward, and which had been locked up in
a safe since the latter’s death. This again might have passed unnoticed,
had Madame Pistolkors not thought to put them on at a Court reception to
which she was bidden. The Empress Dowager, who was present, recognized
the unlucky ornaments, and, burning with wrath, forgot for once her
strained relations with her daughter-in-law, and went up to her to draw
her notice to the “scandal,” as she termed it. Alexandra Feodorowna, as
we know, had never been a tactful woman. She called a chamberlain and
ordered him to invite Madame Pistolkors to leave the Palace immediately,
and to escort her to her carriage. The next day Colonel Pistolkors,
finding that matters had gone too far, introduced an action for divorce
against his wife, and the latter, shunned by all her former friends,
utterly disgraced before the world, had to flee abroad to hide her
diminished head and her lost social prestige, in the solitude of a
small Italian town. But then the unexpected, or rather the expected,
occurred. The Grand-Duke Paul took the only course left to him
compatible with his honor as a gentleman. He followed the lady to Italy
and married her there without asking anybody’s leave, to the general
scandal of St. Petersburg society, who declared that the incident with
the diamond necklace that had been the primary cause of the catastrophe
had been artfully engineered by its heroine in view of the result which
was ultimately achieved.
The Emperor was furious; his mother equally so, but it is not likely
that anything would have been done, or in general any notice taken of
the action of the Grand Duke, had it not been for the intervention of
the young Empress, who insisted on her uncle-by-marriage being deprived
of his rank in the army and exiled abroad. It was the first time that
she had the opportunity to satisfy her instincts of hatred and of
revenge in regard to a member of her husband’s family, and she took a
special delight, not only in doing so, but also in letting the world
know that such was the case. Fate, for once kind to her, had delivered
one of her enemies into her hands, and she was but too ready to seize
this occasion for scoring her personal real or imaginary wrongs.
A few years later another incident of the same kind afforded her a
second opportunity of exercising her powers of retaliation in regard to
a Romanoff. The eldest son of the Grand-Duke Wladimir, the young
Grand-Duke Cyril, the same who had nearly perished during the Japanese
war in the catastrophe of the ship _Pétropawlosk_, married also without
law or leave his first cousin, the divorced Grand Duchess of Hesse, the
former sister-in-law of the Empress. The latter had always hated her,
ever since the day that she had been obliged to play second fiddle to
her at Darmstadt, and she had done her best to bring about an
estrangement between her and her husband. This had not been difficult,
because anything more brutal than the Grand Duke of Hesse had never
existed. His young wife had had more to bear than the public knew, or
that she cared herself to relate, but her own conduct had always been
beyond reproach, and she had carried herself with remarkable tact and
dignity. When at last she obtained her divorce, her only child, a little
girl, was not even left entirely in her custody, but had to spend half
of the year with the father. The latter did not well know what to do
with the baby and most probably would never have availed himself of his
rights had not his sister, the Empress Alexandra, interfered and
persuaded him to confide to her own care the small Elisabeth, knowing
very well that this would be about the most painful thing that could
happen to the divorced Grand Duchess.
In accordance with this wish, the Grand Duke of Hesse brought his
daughter to Spala in Poland, where the Russian Imperial Family were
spending the autumn. The child sickened a few days later, and soon her
condition became desperate. The doctors declared that the mother ought
to be warned and asked to come, the more so that the little girl kept
continually crying for her. But to this the Empress would never agree,
until she knew it was positively too late. At last a telegram was sent
to the Grand-Duchess Victoria Mélita; it preceded but by a few hours the
one advising her that her journey would be useless, as the end had come.
One may imagine the feelings of the heartbroken mother and the natural
resentment she must have felt at this piece of heartlessness on the part
of her former sister-in-law. For a long time she would not be comforted,
but at last she was induced to listen to her cousin, the Grand-Duke
Cyril, and she married him at Tegernsee in Bavaria, without the Czar’s
consent to this union having been so much as asked.