CHAPTER X

ON the 6th January 1905—Old Style—I made my entry into the most brilliant and exclusive society of Petrograd, and the occasion was for the annual blessing of the Neva on the feast of the Epiphany.

I was invited to witness the ceremony at the Winter Palace in the quality of “distinguished foreigner.”

A small pavilion shaped like an ancient circular Greek temple, with pillars, open on all sides, had been erected on the frozen waters of the river in front of the Palace. In the centre a hole was pierced in the ice, until the waters were reached, when a bucket was lowered and brought up brim-full; this water was then blessed by the Archimandrite, some set aside for the blessing of new-born babes, and some for subsequently blessing all the colours of the various regiments quartered at Petrograd; the rest of the water was poured back into the hole in the ice, and thenceforth mingled with the river and then the whole Neva was blessed!

Formerly it was considered of the utmost importance that new-born infants should be completely immersed in the Neva—immersed as the rite of the Greek Church demands. It has been asserted on the best authority that the Archbishop, when his hands were petrified with cold, would sometimes let a child slip in, merely remarking indifferently, “Give me another.”

I drove up to the Palace in my Uncle de Baranoff’s Court equipage—I was staying with them at the time—which was drawn by a pair of prancing black horses, the men wearing scarlet and gold liveries contrasting vividly with the dazzling whiteness of the snow.

I was met at the foot of the staircase and escorted by Vicomte de Salignac-FÉnelon, an attachÉ at the French Embassy, who whispered in my ear very discreetly:

“We may shortly be reduced to ashes.”

“If that is so,” said I, “we shall die in good company.”

Every one at that time felt that he was living on a volcano, the formidable irruption of which might break out at any moment.

The various members of the Diplomatic Corps asked to be presented to me in turn, amongst them Count Berchthold, at that time Councillor at the Austro-Hungarian Embassy, who, since then and up to the time the war broke out, has played such an important rÔle in his country’s affairs, subsequently becoming Austrian Ambassador in Petrograd before the war and then Minister for Foreign Affairs in Vienna at the beginning of the war.

It is a privilege granted to Hungarian diplomats to wear their Magyar costumes on all State occasions, and certainly Count Berchthold was strikingly distinguished looking in his!

On the arm of the Dutch Minister, Monsieur de Wedde, I reached the Grand Ball-room and passed between the brilliant escort of Chevaliers-Gardes and Gardes-À-Cheval, besides others decked out in their magnificent uniforms, forming a cordon round each room.

At last we reached the room reserved for the corps diplomatique, where every one was assembled in front of the windows overlooking the Chapel erected on the Neva.

The clergy were wearing their most superb sacerdotal robes and ornaments, escorting the Emperor, the Grand Dukes and all the Court in procession. The spectacle was most imposing, rendered all the more so by the white mantle which was over all!

Presently there entered the drawing-room in which we were assembled the two Empresses and Grand Duchesses Xenia, Olga—both sisters of the Emperor—Marie Pavlovna and others dressed in their elaborate Russian Court costumes. This consists of velvet robes with round deep dÉcolletage and long trains, and wearing on their heads the kakochnik scintillating with pearls, diamonds and other precious stones.

Some were in blue, others in pale green, bright pink, red, etc.; the ladies-in-waiting and maids-of-honour dress in the colour of the Grand Duchess, to whose court they belong.

Their trains were borne by pages from the well-known corps des pages.

I noticed again my Uncle Cherwachidze wearing his grand uniform, covered with gold lace and orders of every description—he seemed more than ever to form part of the train of his Empress.

Then came the Court and the clergy, defiling into the room next to ours, the latter intoning some wonderful Russian chants, which are so perfectly rendered that one imagines them to be instrumentally accompanied.

The anticipated attempt at assassination was not long delayed: presently some fragments of shrapnel shells fell into our room and quite close to the group of people where I was standing, smashing the panes of glass of one of the windows, which were strewn all over the floor. These shells had been fired from the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul situated on the opposite side of the Neva.

Ostensibly the guns were fired as a salute with blank cartridges, but through an oversight of the commanding officer one had been fired with live shells, the result being that a perfect hail of shrapnel fell on to the Chapel in which the Emperor had taken up his position, he of course being the object aimed at.

The Tzar during this terrible ordeal never moved a muscle except to make the Sign of the Cross.

I shall never forget the quiet resigned smile on His Imperial Majesty’s countenance when he returned to the Palace—it seemed almost unearthly. In the street an unfortunate mounted policeman was killed, and on the floor beneath ours—the ground floor—five people were seriously wounded.

Seeing that the Emperor was safe we congratulated ourselves by saying: “Comme c’est chic! Nous avons eu mÊme un attentat!”

After having met a number of friends, ladies and gentlemen in waiting, I was conducted into the dining-room on the arm of Monsieur Merghelynck, Councillor of the Belgian Legation, where a copious luncheon at small tables was prepared, and which we partook of with relish in spite of the regrettable incident.

Each table was presided over by a maid-of-honour, ours being a very cosmopolitan one, made up principally of diplomats, Russians, Germans, Austrians, and even a Turk.

On my right sat the War Minister, Sakharoff, who not long afterwards fell a victim to a bomb outrage.

Fate seemed to decree that poor Merghelynck should be continually the victim of some tragedy or other: he was in China during the siege of Pekin by the Boxers, where for his gallant behaviour while helping to defend the French legation he was the proud recipient of the Legion of Honour; he was in Serbia when King Alexander and Queen Draga were assassinated; and now that he is dead even his ashes are not allowed to remain in peace, for he was buried at or near Ypres, which is now, alas, only a heap of ruins.

During the winter 1904-1905 no ball took place at the Palace, both on account of the war with Japan and also on account of the internal troubles, so unfortunately I am unable to give a description of the supper which under ordinary conditions would have taken place in the Great Palm Hall which I had hoped to admire so much.

At Petrograd one is continually coming across small chapels at unexpected places, erected on the site of some Nihilist outrage against members of the Imperial family.

The Russian makes a great show of his religion, and he places an Icon in every room of his house, hung in a corner, very high up, just under the ceiling; and he causes every room in his house to be blessed once a year.

At my Aunt de Baranoff’s the annual ceremony is carried out to the letter. Each member of the family, holding in his right hand a candle, follows in procession the “Winter Palace” pope, with his long curly hair carefully arranged, while he carries out the blessing by sprinkling holy water on his way.

Three days after—Sunday, January 9th, 1905, henceforth to be remembered as “Le Dimanche Rouge”—occurred the first sign of the coming irruption which had been anticipated for so long.

For a whole week previously the police had posted hand-bills imploring the public not to venture out of doors that day as trouble was expected, and that the police could not be held responsible for what might happen.

The day dawned more gloomily than usual, it had snowed hard all the previous night and it was still snowing. I witnessed the extraordinary and terrible sight of the crowd of malcontents and revolutionaries from the windows of 6 Millionne, where I was staying with my uncle, General de Baranoff. The Winter Palace was situated on the large square at the end of our street, quite near, so I could not be better placed. It was on the direct route to it. They kept on passing in small groups from early dawn, until they had become one compact mass beneath the windows of the Winter Palace, for Gapon, their leader, had ordered them to assemble at 2 p.m. in the huge palace square.

These misguided creatures were carrying all manner of implements, some even shouldered scythes, in fact anything they could get hold of, I expect. All wore a sad look of arrogance and disorder, even the children. Many of the women carried heavy bundles as if they intended to leave their homes for ever.

The doors and gates of every house and courtyard had been closed with heavy chains for fear of invasion and pillage. One felt more than ever that one was living on a volcano—and a very live one too—belching forth the most formidable elements of destruction.

Several times the Chevaliers-Gardes charged amongst the crowd; at first slowly but effectively—under our windows—until the mob was hurled back.

My poor aunt was terribly frightened, and forbade me to go out that day, consequently I did not witness any of the bloody scenes which occurred, but which the papers grossly exaggerated. The Emperor and Empress showed themselves to the crowd from one of the balconies of the Palace, and their appearance seemed to have rather a soothing effect.

Many blamed the Emperor, others the army for the sanguinary rÔle that was played that day, but what else could they have done under the circumstances?

The police organization was nil: Trepoff, its future head, had not as yet come to the fore. Three times the mob was summoned to disperse, three times they were warned what would be the result of their refusing to do so; but their only answer was sullen inertia and threatening.

Had not vigorous measures been taken at once, it is my firm belief that the Emperor would have shared the fate of Louis XVI.

Firing went on in the Nevsky Prospect and the Morskaia. We heard shots whistling past continually.

The Chevaliers-Gardes were obliged to make several simultaneous charges along the quays and other places that night.

The mob was not armed and remained silent. Their action was decidedly revolutionary, but it was by no means a general rising of a whole people in revolt. It was to be regretted that many quite innocent people who showed themselves in the streets out of curiosity were to be counted amongst the dead and wounded—but that was, of course, their own look out, as they should have hearkened to the warning.

Equipages were overturned; the malcontents stripped a general of all his clothes in spite of the cold, and then beat him. A young officer was thrown into a canal; and we were warned by a friend on the telephone from the Winter Palace that it was dangerous even to set foot in the street.

My poor Aunt de Baranoff was more terrified than ever, and told me in a trembling voice: “On no account turn on the electric light for fear of the revolutionaries firing into the windows”—in Russia there are no shutters—“and entering the house and murdering us all.” This in spite of the fact of our house being part of the Palace of the Grand Duke, then Crown Property, and our courtyard filled with soldiers; so we consequently lived several days by candlelight, which seemed rather gloomy after the gorgeous light of the many chandeliers.

Gapon and several other leaders had really deceived these credulous masses and led them to believe that they would, by demonstrating, induce the Tzar to accede to their demands; but it was not long before the masses found out that they were being made the tools of their leaders’ own ambitions to bring about a great political manifestation. Thus, discontent and loss of faith soon spread amongst them.

The most sinister news appeared in the papers on the following day, stating that the populace would be now supplied with bombs and firearms, that houses would be broken into and pillaged, but there proved to be no foundation for these anticipated fears.

However, there was still some disturbance that night, and fighting took place in the Sadovaia; but there was no bloodshed.

I dined that evening at the French Embassy and, as I drove through the streets, Petrograd seemed to be a changed city: troops bivouacking everywhere, rifles piled together, the soldiers and horses keeping warm beside huge beacon fires, the flames from which cast a lurid light over all the vast stretch of frozen snow.

The only Russians at dinner were Prince Dolgorouky and Baron de Ramsay—whose wife is English—the others having at the eleventh hour sent excuses: they had all contracted chills!

I had been obliged to keep my horses standing from an early hour, for the police order had gone forth that no carriage was to leave the stable after 7 p.m., as they feared trouble and as equipages were looked upon askance.

In case of the revolutionaries carrying out their threat of cutting the electric wires, the French Ambassadress drew our attention to a system by which all the candles in the dining-room could be lighted instantaneously by means of a connecting resinous tape, thus replacing the electricity.

The idea of placing the city under martial law was seriously entertained. The Palace and town were guarded by the military for many days; after that patrols went through the streets on business bent.

Every anniversary celebration in its turn made people dread a fresh outburst of disorder.

The failure to arrest Gapon surprised me very much. It was said in Petrograd that the authorities dare not make use of their powers. He played the most ignoble rÔle and worked on the superstitious masses by dressing himself up in his sacerdotal robes—he was a pope—and with his hands aloft holding a crucifix he urged them on; then, again, he would make use of all kinds of disguises and appeared to be everywhere at the same time.

For a long time past he had rented a house in Petrograd, where he gave lectures, befriended by the Empress-Dowager and Grand Duchess Xenia. He was well informed about every detail concerning the secret police.

The money for this revolution—of which he was the life and soul—came from abroad, as is always the case where revolutions are concerned; the revolutionaries themselves were given three times the amount of their ordinary pay. Amongst the dead and wounded were many students disguised as women.

The most terrifying reports were circulated all over the town: Petrograd was to be set on fire, the nobles were to be massacred, while their properties were to be burnt and pillaged; this had already occurred in many places, notably in the Baltic provinces, of which the population consists of German-speaking people and is for the most part Lutheran.

Gapon and the other leaders preached to the peasants that the ground they cultivated was their own, their very own; that the nobles and the wealthy classes were robbing them, attributing to themselves certain rights which they had no business to possess—all the tenets which Lenin has preached to-day.

Tempers ran high in those days. Several stores of arms were pillaged and their contents stolen.

After his flight from Russia, Gapon, from his German lair, continued to issue pamphlets in the hope of creating more disturbance in the minds of his followers. A few months later he was most unexpectedly found dead, hanging from a beam in an uninhabited datcha or villa at Ozerky, on the line to Finland, near Petrograd.

As one can readily understand, the results achieved were not the fruits of the effort of a day, but rather of an organized labour, planned with the greatest care and followed with the greatest perseverance, accompanied by all the treachery and all the brutality of the Hun.

CHAPTER XI

I MET in society many who were much imbued with the idea of a constitution, and even of a Republic, a word which sounded like magic to them—magic, like something far off. They reminded me both by their advanced ideas and by their occasional indifference of the spirit about which I had often read: of the spirit that must have reigned at the Court of France on the eve of the Great Revolution. The Russian Empire, composed as it is of a number of races so diversely opposed to one another—neither sharing the same sentiments nor possessing any interest in common, races between which even a certain animosity exists always, an enormous population of uneducated, half savage people—would render, it seems to me, a Republic out of the question. I wrote of this twelve years ago!

Many an illusion has already taken wings at the sight of what is passing now, and of that which is bound to come. In the future we may not see the Great Republic dreamt of by Kerensky and others, but rather the destruction of Great Russia itself, and a collection of little republics springing up, small not by the narrowness of the confines of such, but by the weakness of their constitutions, which shall be either completely independent one from the other, or else bound together by the most slackened Federal system. They will probably be penetrated and dominated by German influence.

Where will be the dreams of those who thought to perceive in a republic a special autonomy for their province and with it complete liberty? It is necessary for this great homogeneous nation to be ruled by one hand, and it is essential that that hand should be a firm one.

Kerensky himself admitted that when he was in power. But why it must be so plebeian a hand is what I cannot understand. Kerensky has tried and has promptly proved himself to be a complete failure. He was bound to fail, all goes from bad to worse, and one must completely cease to count on the military or the political support of that Power, even up to quite recently so great; and thus it will be till the end of the war and for long after.

The absolutely powerless government of Kerensky dared not undertake anything against the agitators Lenin and Co., for it knew well that it had no real force behind it. It is this weakness, both voluntary and compulsory, that ruined it, and it has after a short period been overthrown by those terrible Extremists, with Lenin, that chattel of Germany, at their head, for he has been bought with their gold. As one of my uncles wrote to me some time ago: “If Germany raises a statue to Hindenburg she should also raise one to Lenin and to his Bolshevik companions. It is their doctrine more than anything else that has caused the demoralization of our army and the successes of our enemies.

“The Bolsheviks are the Communards of France of 1871 who are left unrestrained for the sake of sane principle until it is perceived too late that to allow these mad fanatics to speechify and act leads to ruin.”

No really Russian soldier has fired a shot since the Revolution except against his own officers—a great number of whom have fallen—or against his own Allies when these would not pack off before the Boches without striking a blow. The victories of July 1917, such as they were, were brought off by Finns, Letts, Lithuanians, and Poles, with Czech-Slovak prisoners who had been set at liberty. All these were not fighting for Russia, but for their own liberty and autonomy, which depended on a German defeat.

One can only affirm one thing to-day, and that is that without the Revolution the situation would have been even worse than at present, for a separate peace would long ago have been concluded, thanks to the intrigues of the ex-Empress, perjured to all which should have been most dear to her, and of the traitors who surrounded her and conspired with her to baffle, blind, drug and intimidate that unlucky and ill-fated puppet, the ex-Emperor, a man with no will, no force of character; honest in himself but incapable of exacting honesty from those around him, and always agreeing with the last person who had spoken to him.

Her moujiks are the latent force of Russia, not the agitators of her towns and capitals, and they will be the first to see the falseness of the doctrines of the spies with which they are fed to gain this concurrence. May the moujik not recognize too late that he is being lured away—and who lures him? The ignoble Russian Bolo, his pockets filled with German gold, recompense of his treachery. That is the whole story.

The task of the Russian Bolo would not have been as simple if a Tzar worthy of the moment were still there. The moujik no longer has his “Little Father,” of whom he made almost a god. For him he would have died with joy, with all that fanaticism which can possess the Russian soul, that fanaticism would have made of him an invincible soldier—but why should he die for a Kerensky? He is not a “Little Father,” he is a man like himself—and at that he demurs. Can one blame these hardy and simple workers of the great steppes if they find themselves adrift, no longer having either him to adore who was almost their god on earth, or that to venerate which was the religion of their izba[A] for centuries? For the Tzar was not only the head of the State, but also the head of the Religion of his State, the Greek Orthodox Church, as it is called over there. “He is our pope,” Russians often said to me, referring to my Roman Pope.

For who was Kerensky? Kerensky is of the people and a barrister. His father was or is still the master of a small school. A student at the time of the first Revolution in 1905, he was arrested as a Socialist and Revolutionary. No one spoke of him then, he was quite unknown, and he was arrested like many others; but the circumstance has been recalled to-day.

He has often been called “Russia’s strong man”; after the deposition of the Tzar he seized the power. He was a Social Democrat, or Minimalist. His empire over the masses was enormous; but it began to diminish when he developed in statesmanship. The Extremists were not slow to see this, and acted on it. The Soviet, which was supposed to support his Provisional Government, was only composed of so-called Russians, who were simply all Germans and for the most part Jews.

Lenin himself, the chief of the Extremists, Maximalists, is a notorious Hun agent, and is known throughout Europe as a dangerous leader. For some years his activities, though confined to Russia, have been exercised on behalf of Germany. His doctrine may be summed up thus:

1. The immediate conclusion of the war.

2. The handing over of the land to the peasants.

3. The settlement of the economic crisis.

Trotsky is an Extreme Anarchist, well known to the police in most European countries. Before the declaration of war he was at New York, where he spent some months. On his way to Russia, in March 1917, he was detained at Halifax by the English Authorities, who released him on an appeal which came to them from the Russian Government.

The Soviet is the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates; it is to their influence that must be ascribed much of the present chaotic condition of the country.

One of the great faults of the Government which has succeeded the Empire has been to allow the return of all these dangerous agitators who had taken refuge beyond the frontier of the great empire and who were only worthy of Siberia. Korniloff was the well-known chief of the Cossacks and also the ex-commander and chief of the Armies. He, with true insight, saw the danger his country was running; seeing her drifting to anarchy he did all he could to make Kerensky act firmly. The latter refusing to do so, he took the affairs into his own hands, but failed, and was to have been tried for revolt. Had Korniloff been lucky he might have saved his country.

There remains yet one hope in the powerful chief of the Don Cossacks, Kaledin, under whose orders is the south of Russia. May he succeed in restoring a firm Monarchy.

The reform of certain matters necessary to our century ought to have started from above.

It is certain that if the Emperor had wished to listen to the advice that sensible people had given him, instead of listening to his wife and the little clique of ignorant and blind reactionaries which surrounded her—and from the heart of which she insisted on recruiting the ministers, etc.—the goal would have been reached.

It was in vain that Grand Duke Nicholas wrote to the Emperor denouncing the plot that was forming against him and so near him; it was in vain that several times he came to see the Tzar trying to convince him; but it was all to no avail.

The task of reform would not have been easy for anyone; and was quite beyond the powers of Nicholas II. The fault was partly due, it is said, to the fact that the early education of the Emperor was never that of a child who had, in perspective, the heavy task of governing a great empire, but mainly in the man himself.

Russia needed an intelligent, energetic ruler, full of action and decision, and not this victim of an invincible obstinacy, often a symptom of crass stupidity. It would have been necessary that he should have had enough force and courage to have dismissed the insolent, the incapable, the Germans at heart if not in race who surrounded and dominated him.

But let us return to 1905. The partisans of the aristocracy greatly deplored the fact of Prince Troubetzkoy and his followers being received by the Emperor.

The Protestants, and even some Russians with advanced notions, held this to be sublime, a great step towards liberty and deliverance. The part played by Troubetzkoy and his friends resembled that of those nobles who, at the beginning of the Great French Revolution, abandoned their king and themselves became the first victims of the infuriated mob. The mere fact of their having been received by the Emperor was sufficient to cause the latter a great loss of prestige in the eyes of the masses. Nothing could have had a more disastrous effect on them, and to think of those malcontents being well received—the last people who should have been.

“Ils auront ÉtÉ se faire photographier,” exclaimed one of my uncles, “mais ils n’obtiendront rien de ce qu’ils dÉsirent.”

The truth of this assertion was to be felt the next day when all the papers were full of the account, with illustrations of the reception.

The Revolutionary party was formidably and admirably organized; one felt that this revolution which was commencing was the outcome of long premeditated plans: its fibres had penetrated everywhere, even where one least expected to find them, and one can hardly imagine the perfect accord, the power, and the methods employed by these disorganizers of public order, moral tranquillity and love of country. Every day in Petrograd alone there were a number of political arrests, plots unveiled, bombs discovered.

Those miserable Nihilists were prepared to die without a murmur, as if really inspired, like regular fanatics, when obliged to give their lives, never consenting to divulge anything to the police, not even to give their names, and that in spite of the most cruel tortures used to make them speak; and they often believed themselves to be martyrs to a good and sacred cause.

The names of young men and girls of the best society, whose fathers more often than not held important positions, were mentioned as being connected with them.

There was much talk then of an arrest which had taken place in the heart of the society to which a certain young girl belonged. She had hired a little flat in Petrograd, where she had many relations and friends as well known from their social position as from the important appointments they held.

Who could have ever believed that she could have affiliated herself with these sectaries and been a party to their conspiracy. Precisely for this reason she was chosen by the revolutionaries who deposited in her care their papers and documents, believing them to be thus in safety.

This girl had been in Switzerland the year before, and had there made the acquaintance of a young man who was actually one of the most active chiefs of the Nihilist party. This man designedly paid attention to her, and she became madly in love with him. They met again during the winter in Petrograd, and resolved to assassinate Trepoff—the chief of police. In order to achieve this they decided to station at the great Morskaia, nearly opposite his house, a man dressed as a commissionaire. Here I may explain that, in Petrograd, there were at many of the cross streets depots of commissionaires wearing red caps; they carried letters, etc., for the smallest emolument. But this man was badly chosen; being a very good-looking youth he attracted the notice of the others, the real commissionaires, who warned the police. These latter observed him, arrested him, and found that he carried a bomb.

Of the large band who had plotted the assassination, the majority were arrested.

Our young heroine was arrested at her hairdresser’s just as she was going to the Opera. Her father, governor of a province, was anything but pleased to learn of the conduct of his daughter, of whose advanced ideas he had no suspicion.

A few days later two sisters, well-known also in Petrograd society, attempted suicide. These were the Princess X... and Mademoiselle Trepoff, friends of the aforementioned. The Princess shot herself with a revolver and her life was in danger for many days, but she recovered at the end of that time. It was the same with her sister, who threw herself under a train at the Nicholas station. I had met her only a few days before. It is said that since then she has to wear a heel made of metal to replace the one reduced to a pulp by the wheels of the train. When recovered they reappeared in society without exhibiting any shame. Incredible, is it not?

Some spoke of an unhappy love affair, others of politics; my humble opinion is the general one, that they found themselves compromised by the arrest of their friend.

The affair was suppressed, thanks to the influence of their Uncle Trepoff, the chief of police, and without any ill-feeling, poor man, on his part!

Every day some fresh bomb explosion took place, causing many victims in some part or other of the Empire.

One day I happened to be walking on the Champs de Mars—where so many of the Revolutionaries who perished last March [1917] now lie buried in their red coffins—when my attention was drawn to a certain individual with a most evil countenance walking a few paces in front of me; when all of a sudden an izvo—diminutive of the word meaning “hackney carriage”—drew up quite close to me, and two men jumped out precipitately, throwing themselves on this individual and dragging him along with them into the carriage. One of them was a member of the military police, and the other a member of the secret police in plain clothes.

They had the greatest trouble to secure their prisoner, who was a most vigorous ruffian and made use of all his strength to free his hands so as to reach his coat pocket, which contained a bomb no doubt, and which he evidently intended to throw at one of the Grand Dukes, who happened to drive past in his equipage a few minutes later, while the cab with its struggling trio dashed off in another direction.

I wrote to one of my friends twelve years ago: “May Society here [Petrograd], so brilliant but often so light and so indifferent, not experience one day the horrors and crimes of our revolution in France of 1793.”

People spoke, it is true, of the great and bloody contest that was unfolding itself in Manchuria with airs of deep regret, due, however, much more to the shame inflicted by successive defeats and by their notable inferiority than to the poignant feeling they should have experienced at seeing their country tried and unhappy. I thought them really much too philosophical; it seemed to me as though they were talking about a war which did concern their country—Allied, perhaps, but not their own. The French war in the Soudan, though on so small a scale, made much more sensation in France. And yet how many homes were in mourning in Petrograd, in that society which I frequented, and of which alone I was in a position to judge.

The salons were partly closed and there were no balls, but the theatres were by no means empty, and on the evenings of the greatest reverses were full of uniforms of every branch of the forces; even on the evening when the great naval defeat of Tsussima—May the 14th, the anniversary of Coronation Day—which scattered and destroyed the fleet, was known at Petrograd, the Russian Opera and the theatres were crowded with naval officers. This disaster did not occur as a surprise to poor Admiral Rogestvensko, for he had felt he was going to his doom. For the rest, this regrettable aberration was remarked in high places, for the “Autocrat” made known by all the newspapers that these officers should not show themselves in public for some days at least.

On the 17th of February Grand Duke Sergius-Alexandrovitch, Governor-General of Moscow, was blown to atoms in the streets of Moscow, an event which came as a real shock to me. I remember my Uncle de Baranoff being at once informed by telephone of his death.

It was said at the time that the Grand Duchess had run to the place of assassination and, flinging herself on the remains of her dead husband, had recovered his brains and wrapped them in her handkerchief.

The Grand Duke was not a good husband, and beautiful as she was—an elder sister of the Empress—their home was not a happy one.

Ever since her husband’s death she has devoted her life to acts of charity.

All attempts against Trepoff, chief of the police, failed that year, he having to resort to every kind of ruse to escape, even going so far as to drive about concealed in a post and telegraph van.

Bombs were to be expected in a crowd; in churches; in fact, everywhere!

CHAPTER XII

THE Court left Petrograd for TsarskoË-Celo in January 1905, not to return again for two years.

The Empress lived in constant dread of some misfortune befalling the Emperor or the Tzarevitch, and had to endure the most cruel tortures in consequence. Not a day passed without there being some plot discovered, and once, even, an infernal machine was found connected by wires to the infant’s bed when he was but a few months old!

The Empress, tall and still a beautiful woman, had, however, no longer the delicate beauty which I believe she possessed at the time of her marriage. She was very cold in appearance and manner—perhaps due to shyness as some affirm—and in conversation never seemed to have the courage to start a subject, possibly finding nothing to say.

The notion that this limitation is necessary to a Sovereign-Lady is negatived by the conversational powers of the Queen of Italy, for instance, who expatiates upon the doings of the King, of herself and her children from the time of their rising—very early, as I was informed by Her Majesty, and from which I decided that it is not worth while to be a Queen—till they go to bed: a flowing stream of information.

In spite of all this sad state of affairs the winter passed for me like a dream.

My friends Monsieur et Madame de Saint-Pair, a charming distinguished couple, were kindness itself to me, and it was not long before I got to know all the corps diplomatique. I was invited on their reception days and to their parties, and of course those of a great number of Russians.

On Mondays I dined and spent the evening at the French Embassy. Tuesdays the German Embassy received in the evenings. Thursdays it was Belgium’s turn, and so on; added to which there were afternoon receptions and luncheons and dinners—not a single day passed without my being engaged from morning till morning again.

I got dreadfully spoilt.

I was often taken to the Russian Opera at the ThÉÂtre Marie; the performance was very good, and Madame Litvinne one of the great attractions. Even in those days she was very stout, but less vast than when last I saw her in Paris. The lady seemed to realize that she displayed herself to better advantage by maintaining a front towards the audience than by exhibiting herself in profile.

She had married a Polish Count.

Those who respected themselves, and there were many whose desire it was to do so, had their stall at the ballet.

The Russian ballet, which had become so popular a feature of the last few pre-war Covent Garden seasons, has always been one of the most fashionable meeting-places of Petrograd society. I often went to the ballet and thoroughly enjoyed those evenings, being extremely amused always in contemplating the varied expressions on the physiognomies of both my young and old bachelor friends, with their eyes lost in rapt admiration—absolutely embedded in their opera-glasses. Certainly, the dancing was marvellous and the luxurious setting beyond description, exhibiting the most perfect and artistic taste imaginable.

The school of the ballet was an Imperial institution, entirely financed by the Crown. The stars were in receipt of enormous salaries, and those who were destined to make their career in the ballet started to learn their steps at the early age of three years.

All the very smartest and best-known people in society made a point of going to the ballet once or twice a week. Afterwards we went to supper at a restaurant—my weakness was for “l’Ours,” then very much the fashion. The ThÉÂtre Michel, where French plays were given, was also a great rendezvous, and during the intervals our box was always packed with visitors.

In summer, after an evening party or the theatre, we sometimes drove to the Islands—the Hyde Park of Petrograd. It was a delightful thing to do by the light of those white nights, and it filled one with joy. The streets and the bridges were sometimes so animated that the night seemed like day.

La Baletta—a pretty actress and a Jewess—was then in great favour and had attracted the attention of the Grand Duke Alexis.

Tongues were soon busy with this affair, and the Grand Duke was accused of having spent on her the funds intended for the fleet to buy her splendid jewels. To contradict this report she appeared on the stage without a single jewel.

The Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovitch, brother of the late Emperor Alexander III., and son of Alexander II., the Tzar Liberator, had never ceased to mourn the death of his morganatic wife to whom he had been deeply attached. So greatly did he feel his loss that he was gradually pining away, and this sad state perturbed the whole of the Imperial family, who were in despair concerning the fate of poor Alexis, until one of their members, seeing La Baletta acting at the theatre, and being struck by her resemblance to the late “Grand Duchess,” had the brilliant inspiration of bringing about a meeting between the disconsolate Grand Duke and the actress, with the result that “Xesis” fell head over ears in love with the lady, and immediately forgot all about his late wife.

They lived together for many years in Paris, after the disgrace into which the Grand Duke had fallen following on his scandalous sequestration of funds intended for naval purposes during his tenure of the post of Grand Admiral of the Fleet when the war with Japan was on, spending their winters in Pau and Biarritz, where they were always to be seen at the gambling tables of the Casino.

The Grand Duke died in exile in Paris about nine years ago, remaining faithful to La Baletta to the end; but rumour has it that she was left no money and, consequently, she was obliged to sell one by one her many beautiful jewels, until she was reduced to penury, dying a few years ago neglected and forgotten.

Many amusing tales were told about this couple and the people they met, but one of the drollest was that of a very vulgar rich American woman, who spent her time running after royalties during the latter’s villeggiatÚra at Biarritz, where she entertained them lavishly.

Mrs X... had often met the Grand Duke Alexis at the tables, but not being satisfied merely with a bowing acquaintance, one day approached H.I.H. and in a most drawling voice said: “Monseigneur, je vous prie de me prÉsenter À Madame la grande-duchesse.” To this remark Alexis at first paid no attention, but, on the request being repeated, he acceded to her wish; and she, all smiles and bows before La Baletta, drawled out again, “TrÈs honorÉe, madame la grande-duchesse.”

On another occasion my husband was standing beside the Grand Duke and his companion at the tables when he overheard the Grand Duke remonstrate with La Baletta for not staking a certain winning horse, to which she replied: “Je l’aurais bien fait, monseigneur, si je possÉdais les coffres-forts de Votre Altesse.”

Before the season for the Isles commenced, the quays at Petrograd were the favourite rendezvous, where one was sure to meet a number of friends, carriages being occupied for the most part by ladies wearing magnificent furs.

A party of about twenty of us used to meet every morning out skating—a very cosmopolitan lot composed of diplomats from all over Europe.

The daughters of Monsieur Mouravieff, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and afterwards Russian Ambassador in Rome, where he died, used to join our party every day; Countess Berchthold came very often; also Mrs Napier, with her husband Colonel Napier, then Military AttachÉ to the British Embassy; and many others.

The skating rinks in Russia are very safe, as notwithstanding the great thickness of the ice they submerge large flat boats placed side by side up to a few inches below the water before it has frozen, so that if the ice breaks there is no danger of disappearing under the floes.

Nothing was more amusing once one had on one’s skates than to let oneself be pushed by the wind, at a pace which sometimes reached a giddy speed.

My trembling steps made their debut between “Belgium” and “Holland,” whose patience I admired, while little wooden seats—very heavy, too heavy to be upset—gave a precious help to the beginner.

Ski-ing was also much in favour, and one of my friends used to ski from Petrograd to Cronstadt in two hours. It must have been delightful to carve out a road for oneself through that immense, glittering whiteness; an excursion full of poetry and dreams, it seemed to me, in all the sadness of Nature at this season, which sleeps for many months under its thick white shroud—sleeps “as in a death.”

The troika charmed me, especially for making long excursions, enveloped in warm furs, to the sound of pretty bells; one felt quite Russified. On one’s veil the breath froze in the icy air and formed real stalactites.

The Russians recommend veils of white wool, made like light shawls, for this sort of expedition. I thought them dreadful, so unbecoming, a quite barbarous invention, but the only efficacious one against the cold.

As for the Montagnes-russes, or toboggan runs, and really “ice mountains” in Russian practice, nothing could be more heating, the descent being more than swift, so swift and so narrow that on each side there are planks forming walls to prevent a serious fall; but the emotion warms one up, and that is exactly what one needs in that country of ice and snow. This Montagnes-russe Club was charming and is situated on the island of Christophky, on the Islands.

These “mountains” consist, in fact, of a very high block of ice, as high as a house. One gains the summit by climbing a staircase of wood, which is behind. Arrived at the top, the cavalier places himself flat on his chest on a little flat steel sleigh; this steel is so slippery on the ice, and the beginning of the descent so near and so sudden, that it seems as if one would disappear into the abyss before the appointed time.

At the start of the sleigh the cavalier’s head is over the abyss, and therefore much lower than his feet, and he guides the sleigh with his arms, which he stretches more or less on one side or another as he feels it necessary. I mounted behind him on another little sleigh of the same kind, but I knelt on it and sat on my heels, and there was only just room, the sleigh being very narrow; then I had to seize my cavalier’s two legs, placing his two feet, shod with thick boots, one under each of my arms, holding tight and not letting go whatever happened. These two legs were one’s only chance of ensuring a safe descent.

Once I felt my sleigh leave me and made the descent on my knees. The descent is so abrupt that, for the rest, one only has a very feeble notion of what is going on. One sees the light of “36 chandelles,” which are certainly not really there!

This slope is succeeded by a flat stretch of ground where the sleigh slackens its pace little by little, losing the acquired speed and so on until it comes to a complete stop. Then one starts all over again.

Once we all—six of us—seated ourselves on a straw mat at the top of the slope. It seemed to whirl round several times on itself during the descent, shedding us to right and left, and finally deposited us lower down pell-mell in the soft white snow.

My cavalier had a costume designed ad hoc—À la Nansen tout-À-fait. This party ended up by a tea at the Club; and I truly believe that no more warming sport exists.

Every afternoon I spent several hours at the Winter Palace or at the French Embassy, where we worked with energy for the Red Cross, for those unfortunate soldiers who were fighting so far away and also for their families and all they held dear—so far away indeed that one was apt to forget that they were fighting in the same country at all—on the borders of Manchuria. My aunt had presented me at Court, and I was given the privilege—this being a very special favour—of attending, with a number of young girls in society, the daily work parties which were held at the Palace, in the pharmaceutical section, for dispatching parcels to the front.

On my way to the room where we worked I always encountered Princess Orbeliani—Prince Orbeliani’s sister—in her invalid chair; she had entirely lost the use of her feet. She was the favourite maid-of-honour of the Empress, and guarded this favour jealously—as maybe a faithful dog would—but, nevertheless, she was a great nuisance, always watching and scanning the comings and goings of others.

In all the churches on Easter Eve, Midnight Mass is celebrated; and the ceremony is especially beautiful. I was to have attended the service at St Isaac’s Cathedral, and had a seat given me amongst those reserved for the Diplomatic Corps, but it was expected that a bomb outrage would be committed, so instead of going there I was persuaded to accompany my aunt to the chapel of the Winter Palace.

The services of the Greek Church are extremely fatiguing, as there are no chairs except for invalids; and the heat on this occasion was so great that the small candles we held melted and bent themselves double.

It is a custom at this Mass to kiss one’s neighbour.

In the street, on Easter Sunday, I noticed all the moujiks, country people, and the populace salute one another in the most solemn manner and embracing each other, while uttering the words “Christ is Risen.”

There is in Russia a custom which I think quite charming; it consists in the ladies shaking hands with their hostess, while the men and children kiss her hand after luncheon and dinner. A lady does not require much encouragement to kiss the forehead of a gentleman who happens to be on friendly terms with her.

The Catholic churches at Petrograd are always fearfully overcrowded, but soon I gave up going to them, as once at St Catherine’s, on the Newsky Prospect, I was literally carried off my feet by the crowd swaying backwards and forwards; and there were very few benches. So in future I preferred going to the Chapel of the Corps des Pages, a college reserved entirely for the young men of the best families destined for a military career, where there was also a Catholic chapel, in which I had been offered a seat, by my Ambassadress, on the benches reserved for the corps diplomatique, which was very comfortable.

But, before this, I went there once and settled myself in one of the benches belonging to the general public. I knelt devoutly for an instant, but on resuming my seat I realized that I was doing so on some one’s knees and not on the hard plank of wood that I expected to find. I turned round to explore the horizon, and what did I find? A stout Polish woman had slipped in behind me while I was at my orisons, and had altogether possessed herself of my seat. I can still see her fat, round face, her heavy, massive figure. One could not dream of using force to dispossess her, and her big victorious eyes gazed at me above their spectacles and the old prayer book, with its pages yellowed by age and its enormous print.

I felt like choking with fury at the sight of all my poor plans for comfort destroyed, and I gave vent to a formidable “Dourak,” the only abusive expression in my repertory; a great insult in Russian, and not a very appropriate one, as it means “Imbecile” or even more, and she had not been in the least “imbecile.” I ought at any rate to have said “Doura,” which is the feminine, but my knowledge of the Russian language was not yet so advanced. It seemed to me that the intruder looked horrified, but sank more than ever into her seat with the air of saying, “J’y suis: j’y reste.” It only remained for me to yield her the ground. It was a real defeat.

One of the most interesting ceremonies of Holy Week in this chapel was the procession on Maundy Thursday of the Blessed Sacrament being carried to the tomb, when the four Catholic Ambassadors—France, Italy, Spain and Austria—in full-dress uniform, hold the dais, followed by the Catholic personnel of the various Embassies, also in full dress.

The Austrian Ambassador was the late Count Aerenthal, who has since played such an important political rÔle in Austria, and specially during the last few years of his life; it was he who united Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Austrian Crown.

The Italian Ambassador was Count Tornielli, a small man with a good-looking, amiable face; the French Ambassador was Monsieur M. Bompard, who played a rÔle on this occasion that he would not have dared to play in France!

I often met Prince Hohenlohe, at that time Military AttachÉ to the German Embassy in Petrograd, and a cousin of the Kaiser’s, as well as the chief of His Majesty’s spy bureau in Switzerland. It has since been proved that he was a very dangerous one, and had received enormous sums at Paris—where he had also subsequently become Military AttachÉ—which he distributed to numerous “Bolos”; as for so many people “L’argent n’a pas d’odeur”! He was also present that day, wearing a green plume in the style of a feather brush in his officer’s shako.

The works of Leon Tolstoy enchanted me; but for all that I did not like the man who had traced those talented lines. A humbug of the first water, a great Socialist for every one but himself—like most people of his class—Tolstoy had managed to instil his false doctrines into the minds of the students, those thousands of “fish out of water” who are a thorn in the side of Russia, doctrines which caused them to take so energetic a part in the first Revolution also.

May his ashes be agitated in his tomb and suffer at the sight of all the blood spilt, for it is not to be denied that his writings are greatly responsible for the Revolutions which have succeeded each other in Russia; but I fear they rejoice at it!

Possessor of a great fortune, he lived in the greatest luxury, though he posed for poverty and simple tastes, having himself photographed writing his works in a poor cottage for propaganda on post cards, or working himself behind a plough in a field.

Even his death was a final pose. To leave his home to go and die in a railway station, so that he should be talked about to the last! flying from his family and his devoted wife who had helped him so much in his work, and had copied, it is said, eight times the whole of War and Peace; which act certainly denotes the greatest devotion!

CHAPTER XIII

AT that time motors were very rarely seen in Russia, the reason for this being, I suppose, that there were so few good roads; and when one did appear in the streets it immediately became an object of the utmost curiosity.

Another striking feature in Petrograd was that there was not a closed cab to be seen, nothing but little open vehicles, which struck me as being an almost barbarous custom considering the extreme cold of the place. I asked my aunt the reason of this; she told me that the authorities had once tried the experiment of “Voitures fermÉes—mais il s’y passait tant d’horreurs que l’on avait dÛ y renoncer.”

The tziganes had an enormous success at Petrograd. I went to hear them play one night; their music was quite diabolical and so was the flashing of their eyes. They were the terrors of the mothers, and were responsible for many scandals—and even suicides. They played and sang with so much go and rhythm—it was quite bewildering; the hall was, needless to say, packed to overflowing.

At the time of my arrival in Russia the Dreyfus affair had been and still was the topic of general conversation, people’s opinions over there being very diverse; the Protestant element—in England, too, I know—made him a hero and treated him as a martyr, whereas the Orthodox Church considered him a traitor and a renegade, which latter opinion as a loyal Frenchwoman I naturally shared, the opposite sides taking so much to heart their deductions that it was best to avoid touching on the subject altogether.

The Russian woman is, as a rule, very intelligent and well read, a charmer, even if she has no claims to any particular beauty; she is often the man’s superior; and in spite of being sometimes a successful butterfly, she is at the same time capable of the greatest attachment and of the most profound devotion.

The Russian man, in spite of his fascination—being very often delightful to meet in society—never inspired me with sufficient confidence for permanence, and I was never able quite to overcome this sentiment.

My Aunt de Baranoff received on Wednesdays, my friends also came to see me that day, and round the welcoming samovar we made our cheerful plans.

Aunt Olga—as I always called her—received in the largest of the drawing-rooms, the ballroom, where there had often been much dancing before her daughter’s marriage. In every fine suite of rooms in Russia there is always a ballroom. Round this very large salon, lighted during the day by numerous large windows, at night by great chandeliers, were ranged gilded chairs; and great mirrors in panels gave a final note of cheerfulness. The prettiest flowers were always to be found there in profusion, the Court florist coming to change them twice a week, and it was always a real pleasure to see their pretty petals in such bright hues, reminding one of spring and the warm sun, and contrasting so deliciously with the big snowflakes, which in their soft and silent fall, gently drifting against the panes, reminded one of the cold and of the ice from which that frail barrier of glass alone protected one.

Among my aunt’s servants there was an old Court man-servant, with a face as cunning as that of an old fox. He was called Grakoff, and moved about without truce or respite in his gold braided gaiters. Unluckily one evening he took it into his head to drink certain pharmaceutical “drops” which my Uncle Peter used to take. Finding them no doubt to his taste, he administered to himself the whole contents of the bottle, so that poor Grakoff was found on the ground more dead than alive, and there was much difficulty in setting him again on his thin old legs—always rather shaky.

On another occasion, I do not exactly know what had passed between him and my dear young cousin, Petia, but the fact remains that Petia came to announce to me with a triumphant smile that he had thrown that old fox of a Grakoff in full dress, with all his gold lace, into his bath, from whence the poor old thing escaped with his head hanging down like a wet poodle. I found this proceeding very Russian—I must admit that it enchanted me—and at the end of the corridor I saw a form dripping from all parts disappearing with all possible speed.

Petia was not entirely without mischief. Mon Dieu, he was young and I absolve him. He liked to come home at the latest possible hours, a matter more desired than easy of accomplishment, as my aunt before going to bed used to go and see if the doors were safely bolted. Upon this he asked me to reopen them—later. I refused to do such a thing, and said: “Do what you like; that is not my business. I promise you I will be discreet, but I will not be your accomplice. Why not ask your old Âme damnÉe of a Grakoff?” But since the unseasonable bath the old Âme damnÉe may well have had a pressing desire for vengeance. Petia invited me sometimes to come into his study to smoke one of those delicious scented Russian cigarettes. There were generally some of his friends there, and all set themselves to talk French, with sometimes amusing results.

My aunt continued often to amuse me. One day, having noticed that a certain friend of the family’s and I had talked much together, she teased me on the subject. “Oh, aunt,” I replied, “that doesn’t count, you know quite well he is married.” “But, my dear,” she said to me, with her kind smile—ce sourire qui savait la vie—“they are the easiest to catch.” And she seemed to say, “How naÏve you are my poor child!” This answer, in fact, upset all my ideas of life, all the pious doctrines upon which I had been nourished till then.

I thought this power of reasoning quite delightful and typically Russian, disclosing the quantum of moral sense existing out there.

It must be said that divorce is of frequent occurrence in Russia. It is, however, practised by the wealthier classes; as, although the Holy Synod is easy to approach, it knows how to charge!

Couples often so easily disunited, after meeting one another continually in society—for Russian society being very exclusive, is in consequence limited—reconsider their first step and decide to resume their former matrimonial state; therefore, if one has lost touch with one’s Russian friends during any length of time, one is obliged to be extremely circumspect on returning to their midst when informing oneself from one member of a family of the rest of his belongings; and it is best to be on the safe side by seeking outside information in the first instance.

Apart from this, however, the other extreme is often to be found, which might be termed of Slavic origin, at least in its outward demonstrations.

I knew a certain Gentleman of the Chamber who lived at the Monastery of La Laure so as to be close to his wife, who had died eight years before and whose remains lay in the cemetery there, going twice every day to pray by the grave—and he was by no means an old man!

Russia being, above all things, a country of contrasts, a country of great extremes, one should not be astonished by any apparent diversity. There, as in the rest of the world, divorce is badly viewed by the serious Protestant community, and, naturally, by the Catholics, but, as the Greek Church authorizes it, one must not judge its votaries too harshly!

The Greek Church is the State religion. If one of the parents is Orthodox, all the children born of that union must belong to that religion, which renders a marriage between an Orthodox and a Catholic practically impossible, since this latter religion also now exacts Catholicism for all the children if one of the parents is Catholic.

It was not so at the time when my grandmother was born, she and her sisters were Catholics like their mother, the brothers Protestant like their father.

In Russia, there is no middle-class as in the West. Society is, in other words, the nobility; and then comes what is known there as the “Merchants,” who are absolutely ignored and very much despised by the former, although they are often very rich.

In Russia there were two kinds of caviare, the kind for the zakouski and that of the newspapers.

The first is delicious. The zakouski is an assortment of hors-d’oeuvres arranged like a buffet on a table in a corner of the room in which the lunch or dinner is served. It is partaken of standing up, off a small plate, and amounts, in fact, to a real meal as a preparation to give one an appetite instead of satisfying it.

There is generally fresh caviare and also preserved caviare, and delicious pickled herrings with quantities of other good little dishes, which the men wash down with vodka.

I was extremely fond of this caviare, but did not feel the same affection for that of the newspapers, especially during the Revolution. One of them reached us showing nothing after its title but five lines, and the five last ones! This variety of caviare is a thick black substance; if one tries to scratch it off, it spreads more and more and seems to become more and more opaque.

The liberty of the Press certainly did not exist then.

The Jesuits were not tolerated in Russia, their influence, intelligence, savoir-faire and cunning were feared. The Dominicans were looked upon kindly, as well as a few other Orders, and I consider that the exception was really flattering to their Order.

As for the Jews, they were looked at askance. There were no Jews admitted into the army, only a percentage of them were educated in the public schools, and that percentage was very small.

In Russia Jews are not known in society at all; besides, out there, they had not “depalestined” themselves as with us. Poland was full of them; at Vilna, for instance, two-thirds of the population were Jewish!

As in England, even more than in England, tea is the drink of the Palace as well as of the izba. In this cold country one often needs a hot drink, and the samovar, that really national object with its gentle, warm murmur of boiling water, is the first friend to greet you in a Russian house.

Russian tea is very good; the green tea is excellent, very scented and very strong. It comes from China on the backs of camels; therefore, the salt air has not robbed it of any of its first delicacy and strength. A slice of lemon generally replaces the milk and cream customary with us.

Women drink it in a cup, men from a glass in a gold or silver mount with a handle.

CHAPTER XIV

THE French Embassy welcomed me in the most charming way, and I retain the best remembrances of the moments spent in its salons. The Russians considered the Bompards bourgeois after the Montebellos, who had lived there en grands seigneurs, spending their large fortune, and dipping into it also a little. The Russians would have liked France to send them a marquis, a duke, a prince—considering that more flattering—but at least a “handle.” And, as the people who made this remark to me were considered to have advanced ideas, I answered: “But that is democracy; what else do you make of it?” Upon which there was silence.

One evening Madame Bompard told us as a great secret that we must all say how we liked the quality of the tea served that evening, for it had been sent her by the Chinese Minister, who would be there. We therefore all exclaimed on the merits of the liquid—very pale, very scentless, very insipid—which was served to us; the most perfect mixture possible, as it appears, and into which is introduced a great quantity of rose leaves. And the little yellow man was all smiles, swinging more than ever his long pigtail, the antics of which testified to his gratitude.

All the winter that same pigtail, a sort of bell-rope, inspired me with a wild desire to pull it; a desire that I repressed, as one of the secretaries, to whom I had confided my temptation, exclaimed breathlessly: “On no account do that, it would be a casus belli!”

This same little Minister always arrived dressed in the most beautifully embroidered robes imaginable. I have never considered the yellow race outwardly beautiful, but I grant one point of beauty to the Chinese soul, since this same little man told me that the Chinese always wore embroidered on their garments a flower of the season. A pretty idea, and I congratulate them on having retained the custom; it seems to belong to another age.

Among the Russians who attended assiduously at the Mondays of our Ambassadress was Princess X... She would never have discovered gunpowder, and her husband even less; but he at least was only to be seen when he dined there, and then he took his departure very early, to go no doubt to more amusing resorts. She, dark, tall and stout in proportion, immensely amused the men by her heavy stupidity, which caused her to say the silliest things. One evening, speaking in a mincing voice, and assuming the air ingenu which she particularly affected, she asked them in a foolish way what it meant to say to some one: “Vous Êtes une tourte.” The little circle began to laugh and wink at each other. She particularly addressed herself at the moment to a certain tall, young secretary of the Embassy, M. de C..., who confessed, laughing a trifle nervously, though really delighted, the unflattering suggestion concealed in this word—stupid—for no one doubted that she herself had been thus described; and she was rather sensitive, the dear Princess. He sauntered along gracefully to tell me what had passed, and we chuckled mischievously about it.

This evening, like all others, came at length to an end. Towards midnight every one dispersed like a long and elegant chaplet on the wide red-carpeted steps of the Embassy grand staircase.

At the foot of the last flight C..., all muffled up in his thick fur coat, his face half concealed behind his high turned-up collar, his eyes almost buried under his fur cap, found himself face to face with our Princess, still displaying her shoulders, which were always exposed to the fullest advantage.

“What are you carrying, C...? What a bundle!” she said in her loud drawling voice, displaying her pretty teeth and at the same time pointing to a voluminous parcel which the bearer was trying in vain to hide from the general gaze; and, so saying, she wriggled her back caressingly.

“C’est la tourte, c’est la tourte,” he said with a feeble smile, and casting a significant glance at us as he disappeared.

In her subsequent conversations she never again referred to “tourtes.”

That evening, in the privacy of her sanctum, she must have reflected that there were really too many “tourtes” in this world.

I had a feeling of well-being when from the great salons of the French Embassy, and from beneath their gilded panelling, I threw a glance from the great bay windows with double panes on the Quai FranÇais and on that wide and beautiful Neva, so calm, so silent under its double mantle of snow and ice.

The soft warm temperature and the pretty rosy light, the cold whiteness down below formed the most delicious contrast.

Having read Jules Verne’s descriptions of floating icebergs in the Arctic regions, for some reason or other one imagines that all very frozen water in very cold countries must convey icebergs, but I was cruelly disappointed at not having my expectations realized to the full on that point at the time of the dÉbÂcle in Russia and by seeing only huge agglomerations of ice being carried along, all as flat as vulgar pancakes. It seemed an interminable flow as it passed, as not only the Neva freed itself thus of its winter coat, but also the great lake Ladoga; and, watching, one could not help associating all this apparently aimless rush of the ice towards the great salt sea with the passage of life, with all its hurry and scurry—here to-day, gone to-morrow!

At Petrograd the water is—or rather was—undrinkable, and my aunts recommended me never to touch a drop; consequently one is obliged to buy the drinking water at the chemists, who get it at a certain special place.

A most virulent form of typhoid fever is rampant there, especially during the spring at the time of the melting of the ice, when all this frozen mass of winter snow has to be broken up by axes in many places, and on the removal of which many microbes are set in motion. Russia then becomes a veritable sea of mud, which state, however, is almost immediately succeeded by the sudden bursting forth of spring with all that season’s richness and loveliness. I felt I actually saw the grass growing, so forcibly does Nature revenge herself. Very few diplomats really liked Petrograd, the cold climate, the expensive life, the absence of light in winter, the light nights in summer, were so many subjects of complaint. It is no doubt plus chic to show oneself dissatisfied; but I who found all delightful, thought this attitude of mind very tiresome.

Among the discontented ones was one of my friends, Marquis de M..., Secretary at the Embassy. His father had been in the army under the command of my grandfather. He had brought from France an old family dagger which had formerly been the weapon of a not less valiant ancestor, a Crusader, who had reddened it with the blood of infidels, and his dream was to hunt bears with it, being anxious himself to plunge it into the heart of so stout and dangerous an adversary; almost a profanation, it seemed to me. I tried, but in vain, to curb this dangerous ardour, being without confidence that my little Marquis, with his small stature and his somewhat flabby air, would emerge victorious from a hand-to-hand struggle with a majestic bear as ferocious as hungry. He stamped with rage and anxiety when explaining that he might, perhaps, not have the luck to find one even if he went to the enchanted spots from which others returned crowned with laurels.

I informed him then that there was a very flourishing industry where a victim was supplied you at the indicated time and place, out there in le pays des ours, and he could very easily acquire a skin for a rug; but my Marquis listened with horror to the suggestion of this subterfuge, asking only for the simple glory which he could honourably accept. How many there are less honest who supply themselves with the white skins so easy to achieve.

Nevertheless he dreamt delightful dreams, of hunting Bruin throughout the winter, which were never realized, for very soon he packed up his ancestral dagger and returned to his beautiful country. I saw him again a last time on the eve of his departure, dapper and spruce. “My servants have started, my horses also,” he said, laughing, for he possessed neither. “To-morrow it is my turn.”

I often teased him about his political opinions, and it was a real joy to see him pose as a republican fanatic.

At one of Madame Bompard’s Wednesdays some of the ladies took it into their heads to ask the Marquis his Christian name, and each of us played at guessing it. The one who teased him the most was a young and pretty Rumanian—Madame Z... Impossible to obtain an answer; very strange, it must have been that name! The most extravagant names of saints flew about. “I know, I know,” suddenly cried the young Rumanian lady in her fresh, gay voice. “His name is Joseph.” And of course we all yelled out in unison, calling him Joseph. The more he protested, the more we insisted. It seemed to pain him singularly, when suddenly a defender arose. “Joseph, and why?” protested the Dutch Minister from behind his eyeglass. “He has nothing in common with him.” None of the ladies dared to continue the subject.

Lord Hardinge, afterwards Viceroy of India, was then British Ambassador at Petrograd. I very much admired Lady Hardinge, who is now no more. His counsellor was Sir Cecil Spring Rice, now our Ambassador at Washington.[B]

The Dutch Minister was a shrewd, distinguished man; he always teased me very much. He had a biting wit and did not lack brains. One day when two of the gentlemen were telling in my hearing a story to which I preferred not to listen, he said to me: “You play the ingÉnue’s part charmingly, you ought to be in the ComÉdie franÇaise. I shall remember that in thirty years’ time. The conclusion one comes to is that one may tell you a little more,” he said to me mischievously. And another time when I was going to skate, and his secretary had instituted himself my professor, he said: “You are on slippery ground, very slippery, Mademoiselle.” This with a glance which he launched above his eyeglass, of which he seemed to have no need, as nothing ever escaped him even without its aid.

He was a good raconteur and I enjoyed talking with him. His wife, also, was charming.

An agreeable couple were Count and Countess Ruggieri-Laderchi, the Italian Military AttachÉ and his wife. They often entertained and were very pleasant. She was a Russian, nÉe StaËl-Holstein. She told complacently how a fortune teller had predicted that she would be an Ambassadress. May that happen to her if it is still her wish, as then she would be quite in her rÔle; but on leaving Russia she settled down in a provincial town in Italy.

The evenings at General Gelinsky’s were also charming; he was a friend of my aunt’s, and one met at his house many officers of the Guards and some diplomats.

During nearly the whole of that winter, the German Ambassadress used to display on her head, and nearly as big as it, planted well in the middle of her coiffure, a yellow flower resembling an immense dandelion, the flower commonly called by us in France pissenlit. I told myself that this conception of the fashions must have originated on the banks of the Spree; but yet this headgear did not seem to clash with the rest of her tasteless get-up, for all bore the stamp of Berlin. The Embassy was not beautiful and not well arranged, a succession of little drawing-rooms, which I thought ugly.

My friend Mademoiselle Thecla de Grelle did the honours for her father at the Belgian Legation, and in a very charming manner too. I had some very good times there. She still sends me news of herself from Copenhagen, where she lives now with her brother, Secretary to the Legation.

At Petrograd the corps diplomatique formed one large family who met constantly, which was quite delightful.

A charming couple were the Count and Countess Wrangel, who succeeded the Gyldenstolpes at the Swedish Legation. The Count was the Minister; she was French by birth and very amiable. I have met them since in London, where they are still, and where I have always been touched by their kind welcome.

A great meeting place for our set was on the opposite side of the Neva, at the house of a certain lady of foreign nationality, who was very rich and who used to receive a great deal; but I heard lately that she had left her husband and her home for Germany in company with a young Hun who might easily be her son, as she was by no means a young woman twelve years ago, although a very well preserved one and always beautifully dressed. She could have easily been a grandmother even in those days. As in the fable, the deserted husband mounts to the tower to see if there is a cloud of dust on the road; but in vain! If there is any dust, the wind of the Neva is the only cause of it.

The Bulgarian Minister was then Monsieur Stancioff; his wife, French by birth, had been Maid of Honour of the Princess ClÉmentine, mother of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and a daughter of Louis-Philippe, King of the French, who had been married to the Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as far back as 1843. Ferdinand of Bulgaria, thus being partly French and partly German, had always been considered to have adopted his mother’s nationality in preference to his father’s, but owing to his second marriage with a German Princess—Eleonora de Reuss—and the promise of great things from the Kaiser, the head of this mushroom Tzar was completely turned in the wrong direction.

Madame Stancioff was a very intelligent woman and certainly without any prÉjugÉs. One had heard that the Prince had taken a great fancy to her, and after her marriage with a cavalry officer he put him into the Diplomatic service, and so settled him in life. After Petrograd they came to Paris, where the Legation was maintained on a great scale by Ferdinand, who evidently remained faithful to his friends. About the beginning of the war they were appointed to Rome, and I saw in the papers that, being suspected of Francophile tendencies, the Kaiser had asked the renegade Ferdinand not to let them occupy that post any longer. At their house I also received a charming welcome.

CHAPTER XV

RUSSIANS are very superstitious: for instance, they would never tell you that you are looking well, without tapping wood several times with the forefinger for fear that what they said should bring you bad luck. My Uncle de Baranoff, an intelligent and staid man, was a victim to this weakness, and I have sometimes seen him rise from his armchair and cross a large room to go and tap on a piece of wood which he considered suitable when having made a statement of this sort.

In business matters Russians are so slow as to be very trying. I knew many important industrial people, constructors of ships and guns, who were in despair; belonging as they did to an allied but foreign Power, they were nearly distracted.

During the winter one is fed almost entirely on frozen food—which does not suit every one—meat, venison, poultry, eggs, etc. Also every country house possesses an icehouse, a regular little house, where provisions are stored for the winter, when Nature slumbers in that heavy lethargy from which the sudden arrival of spring alone can rouse her. Gelinotte is very frequently served, and it is eaten with a sort of jelly made from wild berries in the woods, which blend very well with the strong flavour that the little birds contract from the juniper berries with which they are fed, and of which they are very fond. These little birds make an unpretentious dish out there, but one which is generally appreciated.

The cooking is very good in Russia, at least in the houses which I frequented; it is also very cosmopolitan, much resembling our own, when our own is good—which is not always the case! It is very substantial, for in that cold country one has to eat a good deal. There are nevertheless some very Russian dishes which one finds nowhere else. Among these I mention blinki, a sort of pancake made with sour cream, which is eaten especially at Eastertide, and then pasca, a cream cake, eaten at the rÉveillon, which succeeds the midnight mass on Easter Eve. Also there is a beetroot soup, called borche, quite red since it is made of the juice of the beetroot and to which cream is added; this is always very well served at the Carlton Hotel in London. There is also a cabbage soup with which a piece of beef is placed on your plate.

Caviare is an almost daily dish, either fresh or preserved; there is often a choice of both.

Minced meats—poultry, etc.—are often eaten, arranged in the shape of cutlets, into each of which is inserted a handle made of bone, decorated with a little bit of ornamental paper, as is often done in France also.

There is one thing which you will never eat at a Russian house, and that is a pigeon! In the snow-covered streets and courtyards, everywhere in fact, flocks of big fat pigeons used to swoop down in great numbers. Pigeons in Russia are considered sacred, and the people place much faith in them, venerating but never eating them. Happy Russian pigeon—how your brethren of the West would envy you if they knew of your good luck!

Champagne seems to flow in rivers in Russia, and all the wine there is very good; French wines are drunk and others coming from the Crimea and the Caucasus, which produces very good vintages.

Cucumbers are also very much eaten, during their season, a specially small kind of cucumber. Every one has his own, and they are passed round the table whole in a great salad bowl, in which there is a little salt water; one cuts it as if it were a pear.

It is usual to find in one’s place for lunch and dinner two sorts of bread, one white and one black. I liked the black bread, which was very thick and substantial, for one has a good appetite in Russia.

If life is of the most comfortable and of the most luxurious among rich people, the Russian moujik lives the most primitive existence in his izba. In winter, to keep himself warm, he sleeps on the tile-covered stove. The Russian peasant woman has a child every year, but terrible epidemics decimate these numerous families; scarlatina and diphtheria make awful ravages. In the villages there is a public bath where the moujik goes, but as on coming out he dresses again in his dirty sheepskin, his object seems but half attained. This bath has not the luxury of the sulphur baths at Tiflis; all of white marble, not only the piscina, but the walls and the floor of the room also. I went one day to see the public bath for women. For all clothing they had only their hair spread out, and reminded me of the story of Genevieve of Brabant.

I remember one young woman whose long black hair fell below her knees. In one hand she held a child of about three, and all the bathers gave me the impression of real NaÏades, with their bodies half out of the water, and one wondered whether the rest of them was not fish-like. The masseurs, it appears, are excellent.

I was much struck in Russia by the number of people in the streets who were pitted with smallpox marks to an extent that is quite appalling.

The peasant is well versed in the properties of herbs, the virtue of which he knows, and which he uses with success.

It appears that a certain peasant has discovered an infallible cure for hydrophobia, which is kept as a family secret and which is as regards results quite equal, it is said, to that of Pasteur. Patients come to him from the uttermost corners of Russia, for a mad dog is not as with us an unknown quantity, but on the contrary is rather common. The cure consists in eating a sort of omelet—the ingredients of which contain a certain purifying herb.

It was very necessary in Russia never to be separated from one’s passport, which was certainly one’s most precious possession. They ask you for it wherever you may be spending the night, the dvornik, or porter, comes to fetch it and shows it to the police, and brings it back to you with one more signature on it, for which you have to pay the infinitesimal sum of a few kopecks, or pennies.

During the day a man-servant, more or less covered with gold braid, does the honours of the house when you enter or leave it. He is known as the Suisse. The dvornik, a primitive person whose name is derived from dvor or door, fills the rÔle of concierge, and is on duty all night.

One day we left the HÔtel de France in the most brilliant style. We should have felt enchanted had it not been for the disorderly gait of the horses which drew us, and the want of stability of our fat coachman who really seemed to oscillate on his wide, his very wide base all inflated and wadded even there, as it is the custom for them to be during the cold winter months.

My friend, Madame de Saint-Pair, was taking me with her to pay some calls. It was one of those disagreeable days of thaw when the roads are nothing but pools of brackish water, and the remains of half-melted snow. After having narrowly escaped getting hung up with other vehicles, or upsetting into the heaps of snow which encumbered the road, we arrived at our destination. My friend was going to visit a friend who was ill, and I decided to remain in the carriage, thinking the coachman would keep still—but not at all.

In vain I called to him out of the window—sacrificing thereby my hat—“Stop, stop!” The footman who had got down gave him the same order, but in vain. He had taken it into his head to drive as fast as possible, like the humming-top he seemed to have become, round and round the circular grass plot in front of the house. This narrow space, surrounded by rather high iron railings, inspired me with some fear, as we kept knocking up against this barrier, placed there for the protection of the lawn from incautious pedestrians, and this was the cause of my receiving many unpleasant bumps.

Tired at last of this mad race, he pulled up suddenly, and I enjoyed a period of relative calm, mitigated by the fear of seeing him possessed by some fresh whim, when all of a sudden to my terror I perceived all this wadded mass oscillating once more, seeming more inflated than ever—as I have already explained, the wider it is the more chic it is considered. It shook again and then finally quitted the cushioned seat to fall on one side, into a most strange and comical position, almost suspended. Puzzled, I ended by hazarding once more my big hat through the window, and, mon Dieu, what did I see? My fat, wadded coachman suspended, his arms swaying in the air, his head thrown back, his face convulsed, red almost purple; his lips black with the cold and the vodka, murmuring in a beatifically amiable manner words that I could not catch, as his mouth seemed full of a thick glue. In this cold, and in such a condition, what a predicament to be in!

I seemed to see him already dying “d’un coup” as the Russians say when they want to say “of a stroke.” I leapt out, summoned the Suisse, and with the help of the footman we re-established our intoxicated Jehu on his wide base. I had hardly settled myself again in the carriage, when the same scene took place all over again and the base began to oscillate as though agitated by an earthquake or some invisible spring, and this time it fell so low, so much off the seat, that I asked myself by what miracle it adhered thereto.

At last my friend reappeared. In proportion as he became more torpid from the fumes of that terrible vodka, our fat coachman seemed to swell all the more. In Petrograd there was not to be found I am sure a more ample caftan enclosing a larger individual, and how proud he was of his gold lace, which told every one that he was an Embassy coachman. Well—we did not swell with pride at all in spite of his brilliant accoutrements.

Then it was the turn of our poor footman to distinguish himself. Earth, snow and water desired him at all costs. On returning to the carriage after leaving some cards, we saw him seat himself, not on the little corner of the seat regretfully conceded to him by his obstructive neighbour, but fair and square into space. We nearly fainted. It seemed to us that the wheels, as they went over him, must have crushed some bones of his frail body. Our driver, more unconscious than ever, his quarters bulging, his head between his shoulders, his great arms stretched out, exciting the two black horses with that guttural cry so typical of the Russian coachman, drove on his course unheedingly.

However, the footman caught us up, but, mon Dieu, in what a lamentable state he appeared—paler even than we were and literally covered from head to foot in mud and filth. So ended that memorable drive; how gladly we should have greeted a ukase from the “Little Father” forbidding alcohol.

In winter a little railway is constructed on the ice of the Neva, in a certain place not far from the fortress of St Peter and St Paul, to connect the two sides. I often used to drive on the frozen waters of the river, covered with dazzling snow, in my aunt’s carriages. I enjoyed it immensely, and I liked sometimes going to see the ice being sawn into huge blocks, great cartloads of it being taken away.

As the snow freezes as it falls, there is never any necessity to encumber oneself with an umbrella.

One of my diplomatic friends never adhered to this rule and consequently one day he was pursued in the street by urchins yelling out “Sale Anglais.” It is here necessary to explain that during the Russo-Japanese war the English did not altogether lie on a bed of roses over there.

He felt doubly innocent of these accusations and could not lay claim to belonging in any way to Albion. He consequently disappeared into the first friendly door he passed, and the umbrella never went out again.

The great secret of being able to support the climate of Petrograd is to wear the same greatcoat every day throughout the winter, whatever the temperature may be, until after what is known there as the dÉbÂcle of the Neva.

To leave off one’s winter clothes before this moment is pure madness. Your winter coat must necessarily be very warm, lined with fur and very thick, with a very high fur collar, which when raised—and it must always be raised—must entirely cover the ears; a fur toque is the most practical head-dress, with one’s hair done low on the forehead, as the cold is so intense that it seems to wish to penetrate like a chisel just where the nose begins, between the eyes.

A pair of snow-boots, or a pair of velinki—dainty, little fur-lined boots—is indispensable unless one wishes to contract congestion of the lungs—a thing very easily accomplished in that country. When skating, these particular shoes must be warmly lined.

Russians never take much exercise, and they nearly all wear what is known there as the chouba, a kind of pelisse lined very thickly and often with the most valuable furs; but I did not adopt this mode, for the good reason that I could not bear the idea of being always smothered up, and I hated its feather-bed appearance.

In winter, every window is hermetically sealed with the exception of one small casement, which is opened for a few minutes only each day, just sufficient to allow a little fresh air to penetrate—so intense is the cold.

It is usual even to fill with sand the space between the double windows—on account of the cold there are always double-windows—up to the height of the bottom of the first pane of glass.

One takes off and puts on one’s heavy furs in a specially arranged place just inside the front door of the houses, as it would not be possible to bear the weight of them in the warm atmosphere indoors and it would be sudden death to venture outside without them. Consequently, with these arrangements for one’s comfort and with reasonable precautions, there is no country in the world where one need suffer less from the cold than in Russia; not that dreadful penetrating damp cold one continually experiences in French and English houses only fit for snipes and snipers to exist in.

Many martyrs to rheumatism in our countries would not be troubled by that painful complaint in Russia, a fact which must be entirely due to the dry atmosphere of the houses.

Contrary to the general opinion which one hears so often expressed, that the atmosphere of Russian houses during the winter is oppressive, I must say I only once experienced this uncomfortable sensation, and then only on a staircase. I own I was there again spoilt, as my aunts lived in the luxury of spacious and lofty apartments, and all the people I knew did likewise. The doors connecting the different rooms were always left open as much as possible, thus equalizing the warmth of each, which was delicious. Every room had its own large tiled stove; the stoves are closed so that the fire cannot be seen, and they are of the same height as the room, seeming to form part of the wall, which has not an ugly effect, as it is concealed as much as possible. Birch wood was burnt and only required stoking once a day.

To the amazement of my aunts I bore the climate without the least hitch, the secret of which was, I think, the delight I felt at being there—realizing a dream which I had always had, which I had nursed in silence, and cherished as a vision, and which I enjoyed, even more than I had dreamt, as a reality. It seemed as though I had always lived this life that I loved, surrounded by the warm friendly affection which had welcomed me, and as in the song, it was mine to say:—

ON her return to Petrograd for the winter, my Aunt Cherwachidze took up again her charitable rÔle of confidante to her protÉgÉs, who overwhelmed her with visits, disputed for her favours or her kind looks, paid court to her, were jealous of each other, even hated each other. One of them, Baroness K..., a very pronounced type of the real Tartar, with waved black hair, great round black eyes, and lips outrageously reddened, came to see her very often. Her showy toilettes, red and yellow, a relic of barbarous times, made one’s eyes ache. A big hat, a real lampshade, generally scarlet, completed a toilette of the most doubtful taste.

Her gait was slow, her feet were much turned out; and as she walked, balancing herself on her heels, slowly and deliberately, the chest out and the head thrown back, she looked rather alarming. Her cousins, real, savage Tartars living in their own country, were always threatening to kill her, in order to possess themselves of her fortune which they believed to be immense. Divorced and redivorced, it really was beyond one’s comprehension.

She was the terror of my Aunt de Nicolay—to whose charge especially I had been entrusted—this on my account only, but without any reason for being so as far as I was concerned, for I was frightened of her and always kept at a distance.

Her case seemed to me a bad one, almost desperate!

The next in assiduity was small and plump; she used to arrive dressed as often as not in a tight black voile dress, in the old-fashioned style. Her sleeves of transparent gauze eternally displayed the white skin of her plump little arms, of which she was very proud.

She used to sink into a vast arm-chair, take breath, confer in low tones with my aunt, and then they would both disappear into the comfortable study, the usual scene of confidences. Her confession made, she would reappear, more smiling and plump than ever, and seizing the parchments from which she was never parted began to declaim verses, certainly doomed to perish with her. In vain had she tried to flood the editorial pastures, for the editors proved to be an impenetrable barrier to her literary attempts.

One day she arrived for lunch much too early—my aunt, the little feather of her hat blowing in the wind, not having yet returned—with the added attraction of her son, a young puppy with a fascinating and conquering air. His hair was fair, his face was pink with fairly good features but—I could hardly repress a smile when, looking down, I saw his little form clothed in a frock coat, tightly moulding his figure. And what a figure, so Lilliputian. Choked by his high collar, he clasped a shiny tall hat in his hands; a pair of gloves of delicate tint and patent-leather shoes completed the accoutrement of this ridiculous little fop.

The lady was dressed that day in canary yellow up to the waist, a bodice very transparent on all sides, the marble of her little arms delicious under the tissue, and her neck! and her throat! and—luckily my aunt was short-sighted!

It fell to my lot to entertain the little dandy, her son, during the whole of lunch. He embarked on every subject with the same self-possession, and when I asked him how he spent his time, and he had answered me over his high collar in a voice necessarily rather choky, “I occupy myself with sport,” I felt myself suffocating with laughter. He had lately been doing a little motoring and was consumed with pride, the little puppet!

She, poor woman, had in the Caucasus a husband who had deserted her for another fair temptress, and wished to divorce her—hence these whisperings, this mystery, these tears when she spoke of him. Was there no virtue then in these round and shapely arms?

I do not at all know how my aunt managed it, but the fact remains that when I left Petrograd, the ex-unfaithful one, too, was always there, and husband and wife seemed like two turtle doves. And more than ever the fine, white gauzes fluttered round the white arms and the short neck, and all her plump little being seemed to revel at the restoration of her conjugal rights.

Prince Lucien Murat spent part of the winter at Petrograd. He sometimes took us to see the wrestlers. He had a box there and this entertainment was also a very smart rendezvous. Many officers were there and smart young women. These wrestlers were real colossal masses of human flesh, and most of them bore animal countenances. They began by parading one behind the other in a long file in the arena, then in pairs they wrestled together, he whose back first touched the ground being the vanquished one, and the others in succession. They were of all nationalities. They did not appear to make any real effort, at any rate their movements were calm and slow, but they must have made some, for by degrees one saw their skins begin to shine with heat.

Their costume was of the simplest, a little pair of bathing drawers.

It was forbidden to walk on the quays with a camera, for fear of its containing a bomb. That did not prevent my doing so all the winter without being troubled. Was I then in the good books of the police?

The Russian custom of not addressing others by their family names, but only joining to their Christian names the name of their father, is at first very perplexing for strangers. Thus, supposing your name to be Olga, if your father’s for instance is Peter, you will be spoken of as “Olga Petrovna,” and so on, really enough to make one’s head ache. In the masculine the termination is altered to “vitch,” as for example “Petro Petrovitch.”

In Russia all luxuries are very dear, but the first necessaries of life are not more so than elsewhere, and my aunts asserted that flats were cheaper than in Paris, where they become very dear when they are of any size. At Easter it is the custom to give delightful little trinkets in the shape of eggs, decorated with a little coloured stone, often real ones. I brought back many of these. That day the dish consisted of boiled eggs, painted red, blue, etc., and all the household ate them too.

I terminated my winter at my Aunt de Nicolay’s, continuing with her my social life and met a good many of her relations who were charming.

Sometimes there came to lunch some austere Protestant missionaries, returned from far-off countries where they might have been eaten, had they been more delectable morsels, but where they had escaped from cannibal jaws. Some of them were good and interesting talkers.

Every Monday evening great commotion in the salons; the furniture was removed and replaced by benches, and a minister began to speak to an audience composed of male and female students and young girls. This was the favourite work of my Uncle Paul and my Aunt Marie. I, for my part, took myself off to my Embassy that evening, and in front of the open folding-doors, past which I had to go, a screen was set up, behind which I used to slip out, feeling terribly frivolous. The rustle of my dress caused many heads to be turned, and how guilty I felt thus to distract them from the solemn words—all the more guilty as I did not feel much remorse, and one evening in the shadow of this same screen I seemed to see a happy couple there unconscious of all else.

I was urged to go to the celebrated fair of Nijni-Novgorod. Splendid furs were to be found there and at a very reasonable price, it appeared. Several of my friends went; I should especially have liked to see so unique a sight; so much local colour, so picturesque a diversity of types, costumes and customs would have enchanted me.

In Russia the bureaucracy had a very bad reputation, it was said to be very corrupt, but—was it more so than anything else? That was the only question!

The Russian is a fatalist, a little dose of fatalism is perhaps indispensable in life, but it must not be too great. Perhaps that is why they are the victims of the famous “Nichevo”—“It is nothing,” “It does not matter”—a word which the Russian constantly employs, and which contains all the laisser aller of characters there. This indifference is in part responsible for the development of actual events.

Russian is a beautiful language for singing. I have always liked the Russian accent, so melodious, so musical, and liked it to such a degree that I more or less caught it; and, on my return to France, employed it so much when speaking my native tongue that it was said by some, doubtless jealous of this brilliant venture, that I made a pose of it. A happy thought; what would I not now give thus to catch the accent of my adopted country, but alas, it eludes me; perhaps I have lost the art of posing, or perhaps this also is a pose—a long one!

Naturally the name of General Kouropatkin, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies, was on everybody’s tongue. The prolonged resistance of Port Arthur engrossed much of the conversation, as was natural. People began by making a hero of its defender, General Stoessel, and a heroine of his wife. We subscribed at the French Embassy to present him with a sword of honour. In later days he seemed to be looked upon as no better than a common traitor. I met the Stoessels once or twice at Petrograd; they both looked very well fed, and I began to doubt their many privations, but of course it may have been a question of temperament, for with some people stoutness is a sign of illness and not of health and good living.

My first experience of a “little corner of English life” occurred at a dinner party at the Napiers’, the English Military AttachÉ and his wife. For the first time I saw wine-glasses placed at the side and not in front of the plate, and I recall my first emotion, not knowing which were mine, fearing a mistake. I hope I did not drink from my neighbour’s glass, but I can hardly be sure that I did not commit myself.

One day before my departure, my Aunt de Nicolay said to me, “I acknowledge that you have two great qualities: punctuality and discretion.”

Mon Dieu, punctuality—yes! I had always been trained to it at school and at home, and I still remember the call to order of my father if we had the misfortune to keep the horses waiting a moment at the front door, those precious animals at whose orders, I maintained, one had always to be.

As for discretion? Perhaps it may be thought that it has been a trifle torn on the brambles along the road of life. Oh, very little, not so much as it might have been—not so much as you think perhaps! If there is a need of pardon? Well, give it or do not give it. Give it at least to the child of twenty with her eyes hardly yet opened on life.

I went again to lovely Michaelovka for a little; and it was with a heart as heavy as lead that I turned my back on this country to which I belong in part, on this country which I had learnt to adore, where the sun is so loath to set or to rise, this country of dreams, beneath its glorious spring verdure, again of dreams beneath its snowy white mantle, to this glorious Neva on which I had so often watched the huge barges silently gliding on the still waters, bearing to Petrograd their great loads of silver-birch wood from distant Finland, manned by bargemen in scarlet shirts which gave such a touch of colour and brightness to the landscape.

I felt almost envious of these poetic barges, and longed to float away on one of them; but, alas, one must not indulge in too much romance in this prosaic age! “The West” was calling—so, with a broken heart, I turned my back on dear Holy Russia.

And there a last time on the platform of that Berlin Station, beside that train which was going to take me away no doubt for ever, I embraced for a last time my good and dear Aunt de Nicolay, whom I was not to see again.

My heart swelled with gratitude, but I felt too choked to express my feelings:—

Never have I felt this so much as on that day.

Did my aunt understand the tumult in my heart? I do not know, I do not think so, and in her pretty voice of which I shall never forget the pure, warm accents so full of real affection she said to me, “RenÉe, you have not consented to recognize the qualities of—and I fear you will regret it.” These were her last words, once more she pressed me to her heart, the next moment I was far away.

And when I felt the woods and fields of the Kaiser unroll themselves through the dark night in the contrary direction in which thirteen months before, my heart full of joy, I had seen them flit by—oh, how different it all was.

No I had not been able to—the want of foresight of twenty summers perhaps, but also its frankness! That tall Russian with the pale face, with the blue eyes, of the Grand Duke type—but what was the good of dreaming, and even in that moment I did not regret. It was not, I expect, what Paradise had in store for me.