IT was not only her family and St. Petersburg society with whom the Empress could not agree. Her relations with her husband were also not of the best during the first years of her married life. Later on, when Alexandra Feodorowna had fallen into the hands of the clever gang of adventurers whose tool she was to remain until the final catastrophe which drove her from her Throne had taken place, she contrived to get hold of the feeble mind of Nicholas II., and to influence him absolutely, thanks to his love for his children, especially for his son.

During the first five years or so that followed upon his marriage the Czar, though he never quarreled with his wife, yet thought far less about her than he did about his mistress, the dancer Mathilde Krzesinska, a Pole of extreme intelligence, little beauty, but enormous attraction. Their friendship had begun when Nicholas was but a boy, or about that, rumor would have it, though I have reason for knowing

that in this rumor was mistaken, as happens so often to the old lady, that the dancer had been chosen by the Empress Marie herself as a fit friend for her eldest son. The fact was that this liaison had started almost immediately after the Grand Duke’s return from his journey round the world, which had had such a dramatic incident to enliven it in Japan, when a fanatic had attempted to take the life of the Heir to the Russian Throne, inflicting upon him a deep wound with his sword.

The Cesarewitsch had seen Mademoiselle Krzesinska on the stage of the Marinsky Theater, and had been very much impressed by her talent and grace. He had asked to be introduced to her, and had forthwith carried her off to supper at a fashionable restaurant called Cubat, where all the jeunesse dorÉe of St. Petersburg used to meet, eat, drink, and be merry. This supper, in which had taken part several of Nicholas’s friends, officers in the same Hussar regiment where he was a captain, as well as one or two ladies of great beauty and doubtful reputation, had ended in a scandal, which for several weeks had been almost the only subject of discussion in the aristocratic salons of the capital. The company had been enjoying itself so much that glasses and plates had been broken; when, at two o’clock in the morning, the owner of the restaurant had ventured to suggest that it would be high time the entertainment came to an end, he had been sent to mind his own business. This the poor man would have been but too glad to do, but police regulations were very strict at that time, and he knew that if a patrol should see light in his windows from the outside that he would be fined heavily, no matter who had elected to remain in his establishment after the curfew had sounded.

This was precisely what happened.

A police officer walked up and knocked at the door of the private room where the Heir to the Russian Throne and his companions were disporting themselves, and ordered them to get out. The Grand Duke’s aide-de-camp did not care to disclose the identity of his master, so he came out alone and tried to remonstrate with the man, asking him to give them another half-hour to finish their supper and pay for it. The officer refused and tried to force his way into the room, but was violently thrust aside. He had not the right to enforce his authority against a colonel in the army, which was the rank of the aide-de-camp, so he withdrew and telephoned to the Prefect of the town, General Wahl. The latter, who was an officious busybody, thought it a splendid occasion to assert his authority. He immediately proceeded himself to Cubat, where, in spite of the efforts made by the companions of the Grand Duke to keep him out, he rushed into the room, to find himself confronted by the Heir to the Throne. Nicholas became very angry and asked the General how he dared intrude upon his privacy. Wahl, furious in his turn, retorted that it was his duty to see that order was maintained in the capital, no matter who was troubling it, upon which, in one of the uncontrollable fits of rage to which he was sometimes subject, the Cesarewitsch seized hold of a dish full of caviar which stood on the table and threw its contents in the face of Wahl. A scene of indescribable disorder followed. At last Prince Bariatinsky, one of the generals in waiting on the Czar, who had accompanied the young Grand Duke during the latter’s journey round the world, was sent for. He succeeded in putting an end to an incident which reflected credit upon none of those who had taken part in it.

The next day Alexander III. was apprised of what had taken place. History does not say what he told his son, but it was supposed that it had not been anything in the way of praise, because there was nothing that the Emperor hated more than a drunken brawl, and it must have been very painful for him to find that his Heir had become involved in one. But when General Wahl arrived, full of complaints and indignation at the treatment to which he had been subjected, the Monarch expressed to him his entire disapproval of his conduct, saying that he had had no right to intrude upon the privacy of the Grand Duke, and that he ought not to have forgotten the immense difference of rank which existed between him and the future Emperor of Russia. Wahl did not require to be told twice the same thing, and in the future he never attempted to interfere with the pleasures of any member of the Imperial Family.

People who were present at this ill-fated supper told afterward, when relating all the incidents which had made it a memorable one, that Nicholas wished to do something worse than pour the contents of a caviar-dish on General Wahl’s head, but that Mademoiselle Krzesinska had thrown herself between them. True or not, it is certain that after this night the Grand Duke took to visiting the beautiful dancer in her home, and very soon their relations became an established fact. She bore him two sons, which gave her distinct advantages over all the other flirtations in which her Imperial lover indulged from time to time, flirtations which she was far too clever and careful to notice. What she aspired to afterward was to become a power in the land, a MaÎtresse de Roi, such as had been seen at the French Court during the reigns of the last Bourbons. Her Polish propensity for intrigue coming to her help, she very soon contrived to make for herself an excellent position in the world as well as to earn a considerable fortune. She was a very reasonable, matter-of-fact woman; she knew very well that Nicholas had to marry, whether he liked it or not, and her only preoccupation, if we are to believe all that was related in St. Petersburg at the time, was whether he should marry a clever or a stupid woman. It is not difficult to guess the one she would have preferred had the choice been left to her discretion.

When the betrothal of the Cesarewitsch with the Princess Alix of Hesse was announced Mademoiselle Krzesinska, far from objecting to it, applied herself, on the contrary, to persuading him that he had done quite right and that he could not have chosen a better wife. She imagined that the placid German temperament of the bride-to-be would look with innocent eyes on the continuation of her intrigue with Nicholas, in which supposition she was vastly mistaken, because Alice, though she did not care for the husband she had been compelled to marry, did not mean to let him wander away from the conjugal home in search of a happiness she believed herself quite capable of alone procuring for him. She tried to separate the Grand Duke from the clever dancer who held him in her bondage, and of course she failed.

Nicholas kept up his former habits of going to see Mademoiselle Krzesinska whenever he had the time to do so; what was even worse, he continued to consult her on many matters which he never discussed with his wife. The latter became very unhappy, and it was then that even her affection for her children was not sufficient to prevent her from uttering aloud her despair at having been obliged to leave her dear Darmstadt for a country where everything and everybody conspired against her and her peace of mind, and where she could not even win the love of the husband who had been imposed upon her.

Among the few people whom she used to see more frequently than others was the Montenegrin Princess Stana, who had been married to Duke George of Leuchtenberg, with whom she had led a most unhappy, uncanny sort of existence. Stana, like all the Montenegrin daughters of King Nicholas, was a charming and attractive woman, clever into the bargain. In spite of her unhappy conjugal experiences she had grown very fond of Russia, and especially of her position as a member of the Russian Imperial Family. She was very willing to divorce the miserable husband to whom she had been united, who had insulted and outraged her without the least compunction from the very first day of their marriage; but she would have liked to find another one whose affection, and especially whose worldly situation, were such that her future would be assured on even more brilliant lines than the present. Her elder sister, Princess Militza, was the wife of the Grand-Duke Peter Nicholaievitch, whose brother was that Grand-Duke Nicholas who was later on to acquire such a reputation as Commander-in-chief of the Russian armies during the first months of the present war. Grand-Duke Nicholas was not considered as a marriageable man, being bound by ties of close friendship since a good number of years with an attractive woman, Madame BourÉnine. Nevertheless, Princess Stana made up her mind to marry him, an enterprise which seemed the more hopeless that it was against the canons of the Greek Orthodox Church for two sisters to marry two brothers. As we have seen, her sister was Grand-Duke Nicholas’s sister-in-law.

This, however, did not much trouble the determined Stana, but she knew very well that it would be quite impossible for her to succeed in her designs unless she managed to enlist on her side the sympathies of somebody strong enough to protect her and to lend her the support which she needed. It was useless to think of the Empress Dowager, because the latter had never looked kindly upon the Montenegrin Princesses, to whom she had been very good at the time that they were being brought up in the Smolny Convent in St. Petersburg, and who had rewarded her with the basest ingratitude later on. The Emperor was a mere puppet in the hands of his advisers, and these, Stana knew but too well, would be against any idea of her becoming the wife of Nicholas Nicholaievitch. Remained the young Empress, to whom no one to that day had ever dared to apply for anything, who had been considered by general consent as not being worthy of any attention or consideration. Stana imagined that any proofs of respect which she might give to her were bound to be more appreciated than they would have been under different circumstances. She forthwith proceeded to lay siege with great care and tact to the heart and the sympathies of Alexandra Feodorowna.

At first her advances were met with rebuff; then gradually, seeing how attentive and full of deference her cousin showed herself in respect to her person, the young Empress began to thaw; and soon a friendship, the more surprising that the two ladies did not seem to have anything whatever in common in their respective characters—even a close friendship—established itself between them, and the miserable wife of Nicholas II. poured out the sorrows which racked her heart to the willing ears of Stana Leuchtenberg, who, in her turn, related all her own misfortunes. At last Alexandra interested herself so much in the welfare of this other victim of an unhappy marriage that she exerted all her influence to persuade the Emperor to grant her the permission to sue for a divorce. At the same time she applied herself to invite the Grand-Duke Nicholas as often as possible either at Tsarskoye Selo or at Livadia, and to make him meet there the beautiful Stana Leuchtenberg. The expected happened, and soon poor Madame BourÉnine was forgotten, and the betrothal of the Empress’s two protÉgÉs was announced, much to the indignation of the man in the street, who did not approve of it by any means.

The Grand-Duke Nicholas was in his way just as ambitious a man as the fair Montenegrin he had married. To the Crimea they both repaired as soon as the divorce of the Princess had been pronounced. He knew very well the weakness which characterized his nephew, the Czar, and he would have dearly liked to become the latter’s chief adviser and even his Prime Minister. He therefore favored his new wife’s intimacy with the Empress, so that the couple were often seen at Tsarskoye Selo, much more so, in fact, than any other members of the Imperial Family.

Now the Grand Duke had one weakness. He believed in spiritualism, in turning tables, and all kinds of superstitious extravagances. The Empress’s leanings had also since some time been directed toward the same subject, but she had felt afraid to speak about it, knowing very well that this would not be looked upon with lenient eyes by the Czar or by his mother. When she discovered, however, that Nicholas Nicholaievitch did not feel in the least ashamed if he were caught trying to communicate, through the medium of a table or of a pencil, with the inhabitants of the other world, she confided to him her great desire to do the same thing. The Grand Duke replied that nothing could be easier. They held several sÉances to which the Emperor also came, attracted by the descriptions which his cousin had made to him. Nicholas Nicholaievitch promised the Empress that he would bring to her a famous French medium called Philippe, who would most certainly make her witness most extraordinary performances in regard to the evocation of the spirits of people dead long before.

Alexandra Feodorowna was delighted. She had already derived great comfort from her intercourse with her cousins, and her feeling of affection for Stana had acquired considerable warmth since the beginning of their friendship. Moreover, she knew that the Grand-Duke Nicholas was considered the strong man in the Romanoff family, and she realized that to have him on her side would be a distinct advantage for her, and that his support might help her to overcome many difficulties. Therefore she appreciated very much all the acts of attention which both Stana and her husband were fond of pouring upon her. When Nicholas told her that he would gratify her wish to see a real medium she was more than delighted. She did not foresee whither this fatal introduction was to lead her, nor realize the ill turn that her cousin was doing her by giving her an opportunity of indulging her tastes for the supernatural, to which she was to owe so many of the misfortunes which were to assail her in later years, and which were to play such an important part in the tragedy that ended with her downfall. She was looking for the consolation of the moment without thinking of the possibility of the catastrophe of the morrow.