Czarina

“ In the mean while, although the relations of the Czarina with the crafty adventurer who had succeeded in captivating her confidence remained restricted to the purely religious ground, people were talking about them, trying to turn them into a vast agency where everything in the world could be bought and sold, providing the necessary money was forthcoming to do it. ”

“ If Heaven will not take pity on her tears, then will the Czar grow colder and colder.”
Marie shivered all over with sudden fear. If the Czar’s alienation from the Czarina should reach a point such as to cause him to obtain a divorce, he would be free to set his love upon any woman he pleased. What if he had already made her his choice? What if his anger at the masquerade was prompted by a jealousy that saw in Wilfrid a successful rival? How could she, one weak woman, offer resistance to the will of the mighty Czar? ”

“ Besides, it might reasonably be expected that the Czarina, grateful for the really efficient aid given by the Tartar prince, would confer upon him such eminent rewards as might be sufficient to anchor his hopes upon Russia, and to wean him from every possible seduction. These were the obvious suggestions of prudence and good sense to every man who stood neutral in the case. But they were disappointed. The Czarina knew her obligations to the Khan, but she did not acknowledge them. ”

“ But not knowing my name how could you tell I was the person meant?”
“Because they spoke of a lady wearing a grey mask and a grey serge domino trimmed with silver cord, such as I see yours to be. One question will show whether you are the lady meant by them. Tell me, are you not seeking to present a letter to the Czarina?”
The Duchess looked a little oddly at Wilfrid, as if surprised at this knowledge on his part.
“It is true. I have upon me a letter addressed to the Czarina,” she murmured, speaking with a certain hesitancy. ”

“ For it was evident now that the four liveried ruffians at the masquerade were Baranoff’s hirelings and that it was not the Czarina’s life they sought, but Nadia’s.
“I think,” mused Sumaroff, “that we are now in a [312] position to effect a reconciliation between the Czar and Czarina.”
“I would give much to see it,” remarked Wilfrid. “Through me,” he added moodily, “an empress seems destined to forfeit both husband and crown.”
“You have nothing to reproach yourself with,” said Sumaroff cheerfully. “You have acted throughout as an honourable man. Let us review the points in your favour. ”

“ The Czar seemed calm and had a word of encouragement for each of us; he embraced us. The Czarina, when saying good-bye, begged me to stay upstairs with Alexis Nicolaïevitch. I went to the boy’s room and found him in bed, crying.
A few minutes later we heard the rumbling of wheels. The Grand-Duchesses passed their brother’s door on their way to their rooms, and I could hear them sobbing....
Saturday, April 27th.—The man who drove the Czarina for the first stage has brought a note from Marie Nicolaïevna; the roads are founderous, travelling conditions terrible. ”

“ For days, rumors had been afloat that the late czar had been poisoned, and the ignorant populace, always only too ready to credit such accusations, accepted Sophia’s bold declaration as a confirmation of every story, and the ugly skeleton of murder stalked out of the imperial closet. The crowd had surged about the czarevna in a violent manifestation of loyalty and the unfortunate exit of the Czarina Natalia served to increase the victory. Peter was then only ten years old, and the czarina was probably justified in taking the child away from that long and weary service ”

“ It all proceeds from avarice. Were he the guest of the empress, he would be obliged to make some imperial presents here and there. When our great czarina invited him to Sarskoe-Selo, he accepted, on condition that he should be allowed to lodge at an inn. Now there happens to be no inn at Sarskoe-Selo; so the imperial gardener has hung out a sign, and the little Count of Falkenstein is to take up his lodging with him. He never will be the wiser, and will fancy himself at an inn. So that in trifles, as in matters of state, the czarina shall befool Austria, and lead him by the nose. ”

“ At this crisis it is probable that envy and wounded pride, upon witnessing the splendid victories of Oubacha and Momotbacha over the Turks and Bashkirs, contributed strength to the Russian irritation. And it must have been through the intrigues of those nobles about her person, who chiefly smarted under these feelings, that the Czarina could ever have lent herself to the unwise and ungrateful policy pursued at this critical period towards the Kalmuck Khan. That Czarina was no longer Elizabeth Petrowna, it was Catharine the Second ”

“ The czarina turned from me to speak to M. Bezkoi, who had just come up, and as M. Panin left the garden I did so too, delighted with the honour I had had.
The empress, who was a woman of moderate height and yet of a majestic appearance, thoroughly understood the art of making herself loved. She was not beautiful, but yet she was sure of pleasing by her geniality and her wit, and also by that exquisite tact which made one forget the awfulness of the sovereign in the gentleness of the woman. ”

“ Man-like, he yielded, without suspecting whither this weakness was to lead him sooner than he could imagine.
While this drama was going on in the pretty little house whither Anna Wyrubewa received the Empress of All the Russias, unknown to the rest of the world, so she believed, at least, speculations were rife as to the eventual sex of the child expected by the Czar and Czarina. ”

“ The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
Like the “serpent of old Nile,” Catharine had many weaknesses; and they might have worked her ruin in the more strenuous age which followed; but fortune brought her to the front at a time when Frederick the Great desired the friendship of Russia, and when Hapsburg policy vacillated between the conservatism of Maria Theresa and the viewiness of her son Joseph. Thus the Czarina could work her will on the decaying Powers, Turkey and Poland, and raised the prestige of her Empire to unimagined heights. ”

“ Fancy a poor fat Czarina, of many appetites, of little judgment, continually beaten upon in this manner by these Saxon-Austrian artists and their Russian service-pipes. Bombarded with cunningly devised fabrications, every wind freighted for her with phantasmal rumors, no ray of direct daylight visiting the poor Sovereign Woman; who is lazy, not malignant if she could avoid it: mainly a mass of esurient oil, with alkali on the back of alkali poured in, at this rate, for ten years past ”

“ Over which drawbridge would the Czarina and her ladies come forth?
“An Englishman, I perceive,” said a voice close to Wilfrid’s ear. He turned and saw beside him a cloaked and sworded figure, wearing the uniform of a general in the Preobrejanski Guards; a man tall and strong, broad and burly, with somewhat vulgar-looking features, and with a rich, florid complexion, evidently due to a liking for ardent spirits ”

“ It was not even difficult to understand his treatment of the Czarina Eudoxia. She [138] belonged to the old régime; an ignorant woman, narrow, bigoted, and jealous, clashing with the temperament of her husband at every point, unable to comprehend his intellect, hating his reforms, without sympathy for his ambitions; tried, no doubt, beyond endurance by the czar’s intrigue with Anna Mons, but, in any case, totally unfit to hold his esteem. Unhappily, it was said that the Czarevitch Alexis, then a lad of thirteen, was like his mother in disposition and in tastes ”

“ But the Eastern chieftains did not dare to put to hazard the safety of their brethren under the first impulse of the Czarina's vengeance for so dreadful a tragedy; for as they were well aware of too many circumstances by which she might discover the concurrence of the Western people in the general scheme of revolt, they justly feared that she would thence infer their concurrence also in the bloody events which marked its outset. ”

“ The Czar embraced every man, the Czarina every woman. Almost all were in tears. Their Majesties withdrew; we all went down to my room.
At half-past three the conveyances drew up in the courtyard. They were the horrible tarantass. [68] Only one was covered. We found a little straw in the backyard and spread it on the floor of the carriages. We put a mattress in the one to be used by the Czarina.{263}
At four o’clock we went up to see Their Majesties and found them just leaving Alexis Nicolaïevitch’s room. The Czar and Czarina and Marie Nicolaïevna took leave of us. ”

“ IT would not have been human on the part of the Empress Alexandra if she had not felt deeply aggrieved at the war which had so unexpectedly broken out between the country of her birth and that of her adoption. She had never really become a Russian at heart and her sympathies had remained exclusively German all through her married life. Apart from this, she had experienced from the intercourse which she had kept up with her own family the only pleasure which she had frankly enjoyed since the Crown of the Russian Czarinas had been put upon her head. ”

“ Then the count offered to make her his wife, and accompany her to Russia, and so anxious was the Czarina Elizabeth to secure the services of the tragédienne, that she promised, through the Princess Galitzin, to accord him the same rank as he held in France, "and the emoluments necessary to sustain it." Mlle. Clairon, however, fell ill, and illness gave her time for reflection. She remembered that she was seven years older than her lover, who was a very gallant gentleman indeed, and very far from an example of fidelity ”

“ This registration was a punishment inflicted on him for having changed his religion, from orthodox Russo-Greek to Roman Catholic. It was at the Czarina’s bidding that the princely fool wedded with a girl of low birth, and it was in obedience to the same high authority that couples from every province in the empire came up to do honour to the nuptial festival. A procession of above three hundred persons started from the imperial palace and traversed the city. The bride and bridegroom were under a canopy, on an elephant ”

“ He and his have been the lords of Nicolofsky and the lands around it for generations and generations, even before the old times when the Poles conquered Muscovy. But in the days of the great Czarina Catherine, who rests with God, our lord and your father, being a young man, full of pride and loving pleasure, must needs go forth to travel in strange lands. For you must know, Ivan Barrinka, that there are other lands in God's world besides holy Russia, and that the peoples thereof do not obey our lord the Czar, but have kings and rulers of their own. ”

“ Amongst these last named was a statue, representing a heathen god. It was anything but attractive, but was the most valuable in the collection. The Czar admired it very much, and insisted on the Czarina kissing it. On her refusing, he said to her in bad German that she should lose her head if she did not at once obey him. Being terrified at the Czar’s anger she immediately complied with his orders without the least hesitation. The Czar asked the King to give him this and other statues, a request which he could not refuse. ”

“ Games were organised and ingenuity shown in finding amusements to break the monotony of our captivity. When it began to get very cold, and the large hall became impossible, we took refuge in the adjoining room, which was Their Majesties’ drawing-room, the only really comfortable apartment in the house. The Czar would often read aloud while the Grand-Duchesses did needlework or played with us. The Czarina regularly played one or two games of bezique with General Tatichtchef and then took up her work or reclined in her arm-chair. ”

“ Then the dwarf described the arrival of Prince Voronin and his daughter, and there had been a scene, he knew, between the latter and the czarevna. The old prince had been separated from his daughter, and both were under arrest, and Maluta feared the worst, with the mob yelping below us, and Sophia and the Miloslavskys supreme. He told me that the Czarina Natalia could do nothing more than save the life of the little czar, that the soldiers had already forced an entrance into the palace and could not be controlled even by the patriarch. ”

“ This influence was thought to be responsible for many of the Czar’s unpopular policies. In times of great public agitation the wildest rumors are easily taken for truth and the absurd legends which were easily associated with his name were greedily accepted by people of every rank. The influence of Rasputin over the Imperial family was denied again and again. It has been said from authoritative sources that the Czar did not know him by sight, and that the Czarina knew him only as a superstitious and neurotic woman might know some fortune teller or other charlatan. ”

“ He was a tall, well-made man, who felt all the grandeur of his origin; had much intelligence, knowledge of the way of managing men, and instruction. He spoke French and several languages very fairly; he had travelled much, served in war, then been employed in different courts. He was Russian to the backbone, and his extreme avarice much damaged his talents. The Czar and he had married two sisters, and each had a son. The Czarina had been repudiated and put into a convent near Moscow; Kourakin in no way suffered from this disgrace ”