AFTER a storm there comes, generally, so they say, at least, a great calm. And in a certain sense this happened in regard to the troubled mind of the Empress Alexandra. As time went on, she recognized the value of the good advice which she had received from Madame Wyrubewa as well as from Colonel Orloff. Her relations with the Czar, which had been more than strained for long months, became gradually better when she could at last tell him that she had once again, and this time without any mistake, the hope of giving him the Heir for which they had been longing. She saw his former confidence in her return, together with his affection; an affection to which she did not perhaps respond, but which she nevertheless appreciated, perhaps because she was told she ought to do so.
The fact was that her two friends were doing their best to get her to take a healthier view of her own position than had been the case until then. Intrigues at the Court weregetting worse and worse, as the various events which finally brought about the Japanese war were slowly unfolding themselves, and it became every day more important for the security of the Empress that she should not disinterest herself from all that was going on around her, as had been her wont, since she had allowed disappointment and sorrow to overpower her.
It was an anxious and a critical time for the dynasty as well as for the country that was coming on, and Anna Wyrubewa with her clear mind was very well aware that such was the case. She used to hear all the gossip in the various circles of St. Petersburg society, and she knew very well that a war was wished for by the enemies of the existing order of things. They saw in it the possibility of overthrowing the dynasty, as the mistakes inevitable in dealing with such a corrupt administration as the Russian one would appear in a new, bold light before the horrified eyes of the public. She was also perfectly aware of the growing unpopularity of Nicholas II., and of the way in which he was daily losing what still remained of the former short-lived affection his subjects had felt for him. She would have liked the Empress to assert herself, and to claim as her right to be initiated in what was going on in the domain of public affairs, but it was stilltoo early for Alexandra to avail herself of this advice. The Czarina did not feel sure of her ground as yet, and she only replied to her friend’s adjurations that, if she were lucky enough to give birth to a son, she would follow her advice to the letter; in the mean while she felt afraid of being snubbed by the Emperor, who, though he treated her with far more consideration than he had done for a long time, still kept her in total ignorance of all questions relating to the affairs of the State. On the other hand, he did not hesitate to discuss them with his mother, the Dowager Empress, and even occasionally with his sisters and his brother-in-law, the Grand-Duke Alexander Michaylovitch, who had always been his great friend and favorite.
The delicate condition of health of Alexandra Feodorowna furnished her with the pretext she required to isolate herself more than ever from her family, and she used to spend long hours with Madame Wyrubewa in the latter’s small house, and whenever she went there she met, as if accidentally, Colonel Orloff, whose faithful, devoted eyes followed her with a love which she could not have helped noticing, even if she had not been aware of its existence. She was a woman gifted with a very pure mind, given to idealize the people she cared for and her own feelings in regard to them. She soon grew to think of the young officer as of akind of guardian angel sent by Providence to help her in the various difficulties of her daily existence, and with a selfishness almost touching in its unconsciousness she took to confiding to him her various doubts and perplexities, and to initiate him into all the details of her married life, together with the constant disgust and struggles which attended it, not suspecting that by doing so she was breaking the heart of this one faithful friend who had sacrificed himself so entirely to her welfare.
In the mean while events had been rapidly unfolding themselves. The war with Japan had begun and was progressing, together with its long series of appalling disasters coming one on top of the other. Mukden had been fought, thePétropawloskhad gone down in the waves of the Pacific, with brave Admiral Makharoff and its whole crew of officers and men, and the catastrophe of Tsu Shima had also taken place. These had been met by the utter indifference of Nicholas II., who had not even thought it worth while to interrupt the game of tennis he had been playing when the telegram with the news of this unprecedented misfortune had been brought to him. In the interior of the country trouble was also brewing. The Grand-Duke Sergius, the uncle of the Czar and the husband of the Empress’s eldest sister, Elisabeth, had fallen under the bomb of an assassin in Moscow, and thefamous Minister of the Interior, Von Plehwe, whose very name was a horror to all the liberal elements in the land, had met with the same fate.
It was evident that grave events were at hand, and that unless something was attempted to meet them the very foundations of the Throne might come to be shaken by this rising tide of discontent which threatened to engulf the dynasty in its waves. It was high time something were done, and that some one should interfere to save Nicholas II. from impending calamity. Who could do so better than his wife and the mother of his children? Thus reasoned Anna Wyrubewa, and it was also what her friend, Colonel Orloff, thought; but that was not at all what was wished by the various other forces at work trying to dictate to the weak-minded Czar the conduct he ought to hold in the presence of these unexpected difficulties with which he found himself confronted, to his dismay and surprise. There had got about among the public an inkling as to the possibility of the Empress becoming all at once a factor to be reckoned with in the general situation. Immediately the efforts of all her enemies became concentrated on that one point—how best to eliminate this new element, which they understood but too well would necessarily counteract their own influence.
A careful watch was set on the person and the conduct of the young Sovereign. It did not bring any of the hoped-for results, because both Anna Wyrubewa and Colonel Orloff were prudent people, who contrived to arrange matters in such a way, that no one suspected they used to see Alexandra Feodorowna every day, and who had persuaded the latter to resort to all kinds of precautions whenever she visited her friend.
One day, however, an officer who was serving in that very same regiment of Lancers to which Colonel Orloff belonged made a playful remark to the effect that he was believed to be a favorite with the lovely and cold Czarina, who had never hitherto allowed her glances to fall on any man whatsoever. The young Colonel became immediately alarmed, the more so that he could not discover the source whence this piece of gossip had arisen. He sought Madame Wyrubewa and told her that he had made up his mind to ask to be transferred to a regiment at the front, so as to put a quick end to any possible unpleasantness. She heartily agreed with him in the opinion that this was the best thing he could do, for the sake of everybody, and especially for that of the Empress.
The latter had to be told of Orloff’s resolution. But when he broke to her his intention to request the favor of risking his life in distantManchuria, she gave way to a fit of despair that absolutely frightened her two devoted friends, and implored him not to leave her, at least not until her child had been born, saying with sobs and tears that she would never be able to undergo the trial which awaited her if she did not know that he was there, as near to her as possible, and that she could see him after all was over, to wish her joy, if the expected babe were a son, and to comfort her if it turned out to be another girl, the one thing which she feared above all others.
At first the Colonel protested. He tried to explain to the despairing and over-excited woman that it was for her sake he wished to go away, at least for a while, and that it cost him more than he could say to come to such a resolution, but that he loved her far too much to let her run any risk. The Empress would not listen to anything, and at last she told him that if he went away she would consider it as a proof that he did not love her, and that all he had said to her had been nothing but empty phrases, such as no doubt he had repeated already to many more women than he even cared to remember. Orloff was stung to the quick, but he remained, nevertheless, firm until Alexandra Feodorowna exclaimed that unless he promised her to remain by her side she would make a scandal and departfor Darmstadt, whether the Emperor allowed her to do so or not. Man-like, he yielded, without suspecting whither this weakness was to lead him sooner than he could imagine.
While this drama was going on in the pretty little house whither Anna Wyrubewa received the Empress of All the Russias, unknown to the rest of the world, so she believed, at least, speculations were rife as to the eventual sex of the child expected by the Czar and Czarina. Everybody, with few exceptions, hoped that it would be another daughter, none more ardently than the Dowager Empress, who would have infinitely preferred the Throne passing to her youngest son than to any boy born to a daughter-in-law whom she made no secret of disliking, and whom she distrusted even more than she disliked. She realized very well that Alexandra Feodorowna, if she was the mother of an Heir to the Imperial Crown, would become a most important personage in the State, as well as in the eyes of her husband. This was not to be desired, in view of her strong German sympathies, which she had lately exhibited more than she had ever dared to do before.
The French alliance was very popular at the time I am talking about, and the Empress was considered as its principal and most bitter adversary. This was one more reason for not wishing her to acquire suddenly an importancethat had never been awarded to her by the nation since she had become its Sovereign.
For months this kind of thing went on. Alexandra Feodorowna knew herself to be watched with anything but kind eyes, and this consciousness of the ill-will of which she was the object added to her anxiety and moral sufferings. As the weary months dragged on, she thought more and more of Orloff, and suddenly she realized that she loved him more than any one in the world, and she began to understand all that she must have cost him, in pain and vain regret.
But for her, at least, consolation was at hand. One July morning the Imperial Family were called together with the principal Court and State functionaries in all haste to Peterhof. The long-expected event was at hand, and a few hours would decide as to the future of the Romanoff dynasty. People with anxious faces thronged the vast halls of the Palace, waiting for news which seemed to be very long in coming.
At last, just as the clock struck noon, a doctor entered the room, and told the assistants that Nicholas II. was the father of a son.
There was one person present who listened to this announcement with an impassible face but with a breaking heart, and who could barely find sufficient strength to reach the little cottage where Anna Wyrubewa wassitting pale and anxious, in expectation of—she did not know well herself what. When she saw Colonel Orloff she extended toward him her two hands in a gesture of passionate greeting. But what was her surprise to see him fall on the sofa beside her and bury his head in the silk cushions, with such sobs as rarely shake the frame of a strong man. He had had the courage to sacrifice his personal happiness at the shrine of the woman whom he adored with such religious fervor, but it was more than he could bear to find how thoroughly this sacrifice had been accepted by Providence, and for just a few minutes he had hated this new-born child, whom he knew but too well was going to usurp the place he had hoped to keep forever in the heart and the affections of Alexandra Feodorowna.
THE christening of the little Grand-Duke Alexis was solemnized with great pomp at Peterhof, and there is no doubt but that the position of his mother became, after his birth, quite different from what it had been before this much-wished-for baby had appeared. For one thing, the talk of a divorce between her and the Czar, which had been so frequently indulged in, came to an end, and it was felt, even by the most bitter enemies of the Empress, that it would be waste of time to think about the possibility of its ever taking place.
Nicholas II., in his joy at having at last an Heir, seemed to have returned to his former allegiance in regard to his wife, and he began to confide in her far more than he had done formerly, even consulting her on different occasions. She was the mother of the future Sovereign, and as such entitled to a consideration a childless Empress Dowager could never aspire to in the case of widowhood. It became, therefore, necessary to initiate her in matters concerningthe government of the country, and the Czar did this the more willingly that at heart he distrusted his brother, and his numerous uncles and cousins, and feared that in case he died before the small Cesarewitsch had reached his majority the interests of the latter would not be looked after as well as would be necessary, unless his mother were there to protect them.
Alexandra Feodorowna, on the other hand, urged by her two friends, Madame Wyrubewa and Colonel Orloff, began to show far more interest in public affairs than she had ever done since her marriage, and she tried to establish between herself and her husband more intimate relations than she had cared to do formerly, when she used to spend her days lamenting over sorrows, imaginary most of the time, but sufficiently acute to render her intensely miserable. Her son became the principal preoccupation of her existence, and she would not intrust his care to any one, but transformed herself into his nurse, governess, and constant attendant, forgetting everything else, even the care of her daughters, in her nervous solicitude for him. Unfortunately the child was born excessively delicate, and had a curious and rare disease, a weakness of the blood-vessels, which were affected in such a way that he was attacked with hemorrhage at the slightest touch; the smallest of knocks or wounds wouldendanger his life. He might bleed to death from an ordinary bruise. An unfortunate accident which occurred when he was two years old, and which brought about a rupture that necessitated an operation from which he recovered only by a kind of miracle, only aggravated the chronic ailment with which he was afflicted.
One may imagine how terrible this state of things proved for the Empress, who very stupidly, as it seemed to some people, applied herself to hide from the public the state of physical health of her son, which had, among other results, that of people supposing him to be even more dangerously ill than was the case. The truth was that Alexandra feared that if it were known the boy was afflicted with an incurable disease, it might add to her own unpopularity. Her friends hoped that she might bear another son in time, but after the birth of Alexis she never had any more hopes of maternity, and so there remained nothing else to do but to try and rear this weak, frail, and puny infant, in whom were centered all the future hopes of the proud Romanoff dynasty.
Anna Wyrubewa did her best to comfort the sorrowing mother, and both she and Colonel Orloff agreed that the only thing to do in order to turn her thoughts into another channel than that of her child’s state of health,over which she brooded until she had become absolutely morbid in her constant preoccupation of the painful subject, was to speak to her of the necessity of becoming the Czar’s principal adviser and counselor. They tried to induce her to assert herself in the interest of Alexis, who they assured her would one day outgrow his native weakness and require her help in the numerous duties entailed upon him by his position as Heir to the Throne. In a certain sense they succeeded, and the Empress began to develop an independence of opinions and views in which she had never dared to indulge before. Ministers were surprised to hear the Czar say to them, when they pressed him for a reply to some decision or order they presented to him for confirmation, that he first wished to discuss the subject with his wife. Somehow there arose among the public, and especially among the Imperial Family, an impression that Alexandra had at last completely subjugated her husband, and that she was henceforward a factor to be reckoned with in every important State affair which might arise in regard to foreign or home politics.
Of course people did not like it. One had been used for such a long time to consider the Czarina as a nonentity that it seemed a strange thing to have suddenly to take her into account; one began to wonder what could have brought about such an unexpected change inher whole conduct and demeanor. Maternal love was not sufficient to explain it, and the cause of it had to be looked for elsewhere, and one fine day her constant intercourse with Anna Wyrubewa was noticed. Once people were started on that path, there was but one step to take—to try and find out whether or not these suspicions were founded on anything tangible. Some inquisitive persons took to watching the actions of Anna Wyrubewa, and they were not long in discovering that her house served as a meeting-place for several people in whom Alexandra Feodorowna was interested, among others Colonel Orloff, whose hopeless passion for his Sovereign had been already suspected at different times.
Foremost among these voluntary observators, not to give them another name, figured members of the Imperial Family who had never taken kindly to the Consort of Nicholas II., and who hated the idea of her becoming a power in the State. They tried to find out something to her detriment, and who also attempted to enroll among their number the Dowager-Empress Marie, who, however, refused to listen to them, and whose affection for her eldest son induced her to make an effort to warn her daughter-in-law of the dangers which were threatening her. But the young Czarina would not hear anything, and haughtily refused the hand that was extendedto her in sincere friendship. She snubbed Marie Feodorowna in such a manner that the latter, wounded to the quick in finding her good intentions misunderstood, swore that she would never again attempt to come to the help of a person who was so prejudiced against her.
In the mean while, ignorant of the conspiracy which was being engineered against her, Alexandra continued to spend her afternoons with Madame Wyrubewa, often taking her little boy with her. The two women watched the child sleeping in his cradle, and often Colonel Orloff shared their vigil with a bleeding heart, the baby reminding him of all that he had suffered for the sake of its mother, but with the consciousness of having done his duty to both. But one day rumors again reached his ears that his name had once more become associated with that of the Empress. This time he made up his mind to go away definitely, no matter how much she might ask him to stay. He realized, if neither she nor Anna Wyrubewa did so, that the position was becoming threatening, and that he ought to put an end to it in some way or other. Unfortunately, when he came to this conclusion it was already too late.
Madame Wyrubewa’s husband was a naval officer, not gifted with a superabundance of brains, but honest in his way, and incapable ofintrigues of any kind. He had troubled very little about his wife, and was perhaps the only man in St. Petersburg and in Tsarskoye Selo who was not aware of the high favor in which she stood with the Empress. His duties generally kept him far from his home most of the year, and when he was there he rarely troubled Anna with his presence. But he was known to be of a violent disposition, and as a fellow who would not suffer any stain to rest upon his honor. It was of this man that the enemies of Alexandra Feodorowna determined to make use in order to ruin her.
Anonymous letters were sent to him accusing his wife of carrying on a guilty intrigue with Colonel Orloff, intrigue which he was assured the Empress knew and favored. He was advised to return home unexpectedly any afternoon between four and five o’clock, when he would find proofs of the information vouchsafed to him by his unknown friend. The young man, instead of putting these denunciations in the fire, became so enraged that he determined to follow the advice of his anonymous correspondent. After having advised Anna that he was going away on a few days’ cruise, he waited until the hour that had been indicated to him, and boldly walked back to his house.
He was met at the door by the Cossack in personal attendance on the Empress, who informedhim that he could not get in. Wyrubew protested, and was quietly told that the Sovereign was visiting his wife, and that according to etiquette no one could be allowed to enter a place where she was unless by her special permission. The officer became furious, brushed the Cossack aside, and penetrated into the sitting-room, after having noticed that a military overcoat was hanging in his hall. He found the apartment empty, but in the adjoining one, which was Anna’s boudoir, he could hear voices, one of which was distinctly masculine. He did not hesitate, but made his way inside, to find that his wife was not there, but that the Empress, pale and lovely, was standing by the mantelpiece, while Colonel Orloff, on his knees before her, was kissing passionately the hem of her skirt.
Alexandra Feodorowna gave one cry, which echoed through the whole building and brought Madame Wyrubewa to her help. Wyrubew himself remained silent and dazed by the unexpected sight. The only one not to lose presence of mind was Colonel Orloff, who, starting to his feet, went up to the intruder with the stern words:
“You are going to give me your word of honor to remain silent.”
Wyrubew passed his hand over his eyes. He could hardly believe his own senses, and the terrible idea crossed his mind that his wifehad been helping the Czarina in an amorous intrigue, and that very probably he would have to pay the penalty for this piece of complaisance, which he did not in the least care to do. He thought that insolence was the best way to get out of an impossible position with flying colors, and so he simply sneered in the face of Orloff, with the remark:
“Not I. If you have chosen to abuse my confidence, together with my wife, you cannot expect me to help you in your villainy.”
Anna rushed to the Empress and took her in her arms, trying to lead her out of the room. Orloff made a movement forward as if he wanted to strangle Wyrubew; then he contained himself and said in a low voice:
“You know that you are not speaking the truth. Once more I implore you not to mention to any one what has taken place here, and I give you my word of honor to meet you whenever and wherever you like.”
“You are not a man from whom one can expect satisfaction,” replied Wyrubew, “and I will not claim it from you. There are other means at my disposal to punish you,” and he turned away contemptuously.
The young Colonel’s face became by turns deadly pale and fiery red. It was evident that he could hardly contain the tumultuous feelings which were racking him. Before him stood the Czarina looking at him with haggard eyesand trying to free herself from the encircling arms of her friend. Anna was weeping profusely and vainly struggling with an emotion she absolutely could not control. Orloff went up to the two women, and once more knelt before the Empress.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I ought to have known better, but believe me, I shall atone.”
He kissed once more the hem of her garment and went out of the room, without looking round, brushing past Wyrubew as if he had not seen him, and went back to his own house, calm and determined, but probably with the feelings of a man about to be taken to the scaffold.
Madame Wyrubewa seized her husband by the arm.
“Go now,” she cried. “You have done enough evil for to-day, but remember that henceforth everything is at end between us.”
He laughed sardonically, but obeyed her, and the couple never set eyes upon each other again after that terrible afternoon. The next day St. Petersburg was electrified by hearing that the popular Colonel Orloff had been found dead in his room, shot through the temple. He had atoned.
And two months later the Synod pronounced the decree of divorce between Anna Wyrubewa and her husband. The tragedy, like so many others of the same kind, had come to an end, by breaking two women’s hearts.
THE suicide of Colonel Orloff was perhaps one of the events which provoked the most sensation in St. Petersburg in recent years. Everybody had known him, and he had been a general favorite, not only in his regiment, but also among all the circles of society which he had frequented. The Czar, who had also liked him very much, was deeply affected by the catastrophe, and everybody kept wondering what could have induced a man who apparently had not a single thing in the world to trouble him to take his own life in such an unexpected manner.
The Empress alone said nothing. She was present at all the funeral services which were celebrated over the coffin of the young officer, but so was Nicholas II. Her attendance could not be considered as an extraordinary thing. No one, with the exception of Anna Wyrubewa, who had accompanied her, knew that on the night preceding the funeral of her friend Alexandra Feodorowna had proceeded aloneand unattended, save for her, to the house where his mortal remains lay in state, and had spent an hour praying beside his dead body and weeping bitter tears. Outwardly, however, her calm had remained unshaken; and she had succeeded in quite a wonderful way in keeping her feelings under control. The only thing which she had insisted upon was to have Colonel Orloff buried in the cemetery of Tsarskoye Selo, where she had a simple monument, consisting of a large white marble cross, erected. She used to go every day to pray there, and to leave flowers on this tomb which represented for her so many hopes, and perhaps something else besides.
Of course these visits became known, but by a wonderful miracle they were not commented upon in the way they might have been. The reputation for eccentricity of Alexandra Feodorowna had by that time become so well established that people had left off wondering at anything she might attempt to do, and, besides, every one believed that the Colonel’s death had been somehow connected with a love intrigue he had carried on with Anna Wyrubewa, whose divorce lent ground for such a theory. It was suspected or guessed that something had taken place in her house, but no one could exactly ascertain what this something had been, and Wyrubew himself had been for once thoroughly frightened, andhad come to the conclusion that the best thing he could do for his own sake as well as for that of others was to hold his tongue, and to accept the divorce upon which his wife insisted. Later on, however, he unburdened his soul to some of his particular friends, but that happened at a time when people were thinking of other things than the tragical death of an officer whose existence was already forgotten by most of those who had known him.
As for the Empress, she had, as we have seen, borne herself wonderfully well in the first moments which had followed upon the tragedy, but afterward her nerves gave way entirely, and it was then that she had to be kept in strict seclusion, and under the care of trained nurses. It was said that her reason had given way under the load of her anxiety for her small son, and that the thought of his serious condition had weighed down so thoroughly on her mind that she had grown melancholy to an alarming extent. The story was believed perhaps because it suited so many people to think that it was true, and, besides, the political situation in Russia was becoming so alarming that it entirely absorbed public attention. The war with Japan had come to an ignominious end, and shown the many failings, as well as the thorough insufficiency, of the Government. The first symptoms of the Revolution wereclearly appearing on the horizon, with its attendant horrors. Everybody felt that something had to be done in order to avert a catastrophe the extent of which it was impossible to foresee, but which was generally considered as being inevitable, unless the Czar made up his mind to grant the reforms for which his whole Empire was clamoring.
During those years, which were the prelude of other even more eventful ones that were later on to sweep away the Throne of the Romanoffs, Nicholas II. might still have regained the popularity which he had lost. If he had only bravely and courageously faced his people, and tried to get into direct contact with them, he could have secured for his dynasty a new lease of life. He was not liked, it is true, and he was not trusted, which was still worse; but nations are sometimes apt to be led by impulse, and it is certain that Russia would have felt grateful to him if he had only made an appeal to its loyalty for his person, and asked of her to help him in the task of repairing the wounds caused by the disastrous campaign that had come to an end with the signature of the Treaty of Portsmouth.
But the Czar ignored the wishes of his subjects and refused to acknowledge the justice of their claims to be taken into his confidence. He was narrow-minded, cruel by disposition, and though not at all an autocrat, yet everyinch a tyrant. He was even something worse than that; he was a coward, and this is a defect which neither nations nor women forgive in those to whom they find their destinies intrusted.
The remembrance of that dreadful Sunday when a crowd of peaceful workmen, under the leadership of the afterward notorious priest, Gapone, marched toward the Winter Palace, to be met with the firing of machine-guns that laid them low by hundreds on the pavement—the remembrance of this bloody deed has never been effaced from the mind of the Russian nation. It traced between itself and its Czar a line of demarcation which could never be removed later on.
Many versions exist as to the conduct of Nicholas II. on that awful day. Some people have said that it was the Empress who had entreated him to fly to Tsarskoye Selo, where she thought that they would be in greater safety than in St. Petersburg; others have asserted that it was he who of his own accord had decided that it would be better for him to leave the capital and to abandon to his uncle, the Grand-Duke Wladimir, the task of drowning in blood this attempt of his subjects to enter into direct communication with him. Probably both versions are right, in a sense, at least, because it is certain that Alexandra Feodorowna was always in fear somethingmight happen to her son, and very likely she tried to induce her husband to consider how best to insure the safety of their only boy; on the other hand, the Emperor might, had he only come himself to take a sane view of the situation such as it presented itself at the time, have been able to reassure his wife and to explain to her that neither she nor their children were in any danger. Nicholas II., however, had only one thought in his small mind, and that was how to punish this “insolence,” as he termed it, of his people. For him a mob was always a mob, except when it was ordered to cheer him, and lately he had had to acknowledge that, in regard to St. Petersburg, cheering had become rather a rare event.
I am not trying to relate here any of the numerous episodes which have made the unsuccessful Revolution of 1905 memorable. I am not writing the history of Nicholas II. Others have done so, and will do so, better than I could. What I only want to point out is the utter callousness shown by both the Czar and the Czarina in presence of the abominable repression which the police, together with some military commanders, inaugurated in regard to the people compromised even in a slight degree in the movement of emancipation which had shaken the existence of the dynasty. It was in vain that some wise people, like Count Witte, for instance, had tried to explainto Nicholas II. that unless he frankly granted some reforms without which it would be impossible to govern Russia in the future he might expect an explosion of wrath on the part of the nation which it would be almost impossible to subdue or to destroy. The Czar refused to listen, and when at last he yielded to the demands of his Ministry and signed the famous Manifest of the 17th of October, with its “simulacre” of constitution, it was with the firm intention not to keep any of the promises which it contained, and to try, on the contrary, to reduce to absolute powerlessness the National Assembly, or Duma, as it was called, the election of which he had allowed only because he could not help it, but not at all because he believed or hoped it might prove useful to him in the solution of the many problems which were waiting to be unraveled.
What followed upon the first convocation of the first Parliament Russia was to know is already a matter of history. It did not live for more than a few weeks, and very probably the Czar had never intended it to exist for any length of time. What he wished was to appear before the eyes of Europe as a Sovereign who had been willing to make any amount of sacrifices in order to insure the welfare of his subjects, who, instead of showing themselves grateful to him for his good intentions, had rewarded him with the basest ingratitude.He thought this a clever piece of policy, forgetting that any politician worthy of the name could see at once through his game, and that this game could have only one result—that of inspiring an utter contempt for his person as well as for his moral character.
Therein lies the great, the supreme, fault of Nicholas II. He never could bring himself to act frankly in regard to any serious matter in which his people were concerned. The Empress, in her strange way, was far more honest, because she did not hesitate to follow the instincts of her heart, and in her most mistaken actions she was at least sincere.
During the years that followed upon the insurrectionary movement of 1905 Alexandra Feodorowna was in such a state of health that it was almost impossible for her to take any part in what went on around her. Her reason had been seriously compromised by the shock caused by the tragical ending of the only romance she had known in her life, and she used to spend hours weeping in her room, absorbed in the contemplation of her own grief. It was in vain that Anna Wyrubewa, who had become more intimate with her than had even been the case before, had tried to induce her to fight the morbid ideas which were torturing her. The Empress would not listen to her friend, and insisted on secluding herself from the world and even from her own daughters,whose presence irritated her and made her give way to fits of impatience that were very nearly akin to madness. The girls were perfectly charming and had the luck to have an excellent governess, who tried to give them the love their own mother refused or was unable to award them; nevertheless their lives were blighted by the illness of the Empress, and it is not extraordinary that they came to care for their father more than for her, whom they were always more or less afraid to approach, whom they were constantly told they must not bother by questions of any kind or manifestations of affection.
It was only the little Cesarewitsch who was allowed to share his mother’s solitude, whom she would never let out of her sight. He was the only preoccupation her diseased mind would admit, and when she saw that his state of health did not improve she became more and more desperate, until one day she confided to Anna Wyrubewa that she was sure God was punishing her for the affection which she acknowledged now that she had borne for Orloff, and that her boy would never get well. Her despair was so evident, and her mind was getting so unhinged, that at last the question of putting her in some retreat where she could be under a doctor’s continual care was seriously considered by her medical attendants, who even informed the Czar of their fears in regard tothe sanity of his Consort. Of course the fact that they had done so reached the knowledge of Madame Wyrubewa, and it was then that the latter began to consider whether it would not be possible to restore by some way or other the equanimity of Alexandra Feodorowna and to procure for her some kind of consolation for the seemingly incurable grief which was destroying her life and her reason. Unfortunately for all parties concerned, she was to make at that time the acquaintance of the notorious Raspoutine, whom she introduced, under the circumstances which I am going presently to relate, to the miserable, half-demented Empress, an introduction which was to prove so fatal not only to the unhappy Sovereign, but also through her to the whole of Russia.
ANNA WYRUBEWA had always been inclined toward religious exaggeration, and this was perhaps one of the reasons why the Empress, who for years had buried herself in the exercise of all kinds of devotional practices, had taken to her so quickly. They were both of a mystical turn of mind, and never so happy as when enabled to spend long hours absorbed in prayer before some icon or other. And besides this, Anna was in the habit of frequenting certain circles of St. Petersburg society that were considered as the supporters of orthodoxy in its most rigid form, where all questions concerning the discipline of the Church were discussed and in some cases decided.
Such, for instance, was the house of the Countess Sophy Ignatieff, where the higher clergy used to meet at weekly assemblies, during which the laxity of the younger generation in regard to religious matters was discussed with many a sigh and many a shaking of wise heads, disposed to admit thatthis religious indifference, which was getting stronger and stronger every day, was bound to bring Russia to the brink of terrible misfortunes. Countess Ignatieff had traveled all over her native country in search of its sacred shrines and places, and was very well known personally in almost all the principal convents in the Empire. She had been suspected at one time of sympathies with dissenters, but this has never been proved; on the contrary, in her old age she gained the reputation of being fanatically orthodox, one who saw no salvation outside the fold of her own creed, who favored persecution of all others on account of her conviction that people ought to be brought back to the bosom of the Greek Church by any means, even through violence if other ones failed.
During one of the yearly pilgrimages in which so much of her time was spent she had had occasion to meet a kind of vagrant preacher whose wild eloquence had captivated her fancy and her imagination, and she had been partly instrumental in his coming to St. Petersburg, where she had arranged for him to hold religious meetings in her house, to which she had invited prominent church dignitaries, together with a few ladies of an enthusiastic turn of mind whom she believed would be inclined to listen to the wild ravings, for they were nothing else, of her newprotégé.
At first people laughed at her, as well as at the uncouth appearance of the “Prophet of God,” as she called him, who, while not blessed with the eloquence of a Savonarola, yet possessed sufficient persuasive gifts and talents to shake the equanimity of the hysterically inclined women who listened to him. This “Prophet” was none other than Grigory Raspoutine, who later on was to become such an important personage in Russia.
Madame Wyrubewa had heard about Raspoutine a long time before she ever came to hear him. But after she had had the opportunity of meeting him she thought that it would not be a bad thing to bring him to Tsarskoye Selo, where the poor Empress was eating away her heart in her grief at the loss of all that she had cared for in life, and to try to induce Alexandra to listen to him, and to pray together with him. He was supposed to perform wonders by the intensity and the fervor of his prayers, and it might just be possible that the very fact of his being a complete stranger to her, and moreover a man totally outside Court circles and Court intrigues, would influence the Czarina to give him her confidence and to permit him to cheer her up. At all events, she spoke about him several times, and pleaded hard with the Empress to allow him to be brought to her. This Alexandra Feodorowna absolutely refused, but she was induced at last to consent to seehim at the house of Anna Wyrubewa, and thither came one winter evening the adventurer who was in time to become the Cagliostro of a reign which was not even worthy to have any one else but a common, uncouth peasant for its jester.
Now, as has been ultimately proved, Raspoutine was far from being the saintly man his admirers thought he was, but he was endowed with an unusual amount of cunning, and far more spirit of observation than he was credited with. When he was told that he would have the honor of meeting the Empress of Russia, and to pray in her presence for the health of her delicate little boy, he had at once perceived the advantages which might result for him out of this introduction, if only in regard to his personal prestige before his disciples and followers. He was above everything else a man who cared for his enjoyment as well as for the good things of life, and who, in the way of Paradise, only admitted the one described by Mohammed in his Koran. He had led a licentious, godless kind of existence, which he had contrived to persuade the weak women who had succumbed to his exhortations was in accord with the spirit of the doctrine which he preached, the principal points of which consisted in blind submission to his will and to his fancies. He had told them that they would be cleansed of their sins by a complete unionwith him, which he meant in the physical as well as in the moral sense of the word. It is probable that in his dealings with all the people who had grown to believe in him he had had recourse to his incontestable hypnotical powers and to practices of magnetic influence which he had learned amid some wild tribes of Siberia, where he had spent his childhood and early youth, who are to this day adepts in the art of witchcraft as well as in all kinds of magical rites and customs. At the same time the crafty adventurer knew very well that it would be unwise of him at the beginning of his intercourse with the Consort of his Sovereign, an intercourse which he was fully determined should be continued and not be limited to a single interview, to do aught else but assume the attitude of a man entirely absorbed in God and in the practices of religion. When he was introduced to Alexandra Feodorowna at the house of Anna Wyrubewa, he therefore remained standing before her, in an attitude of apparent humility, and he waited quietly until she should begin talking with him, which she immediately did, saying that she had heard so much about him that she had wished to see him and to ask him to pray for her little boy, whose state of health gave rise to so much anxiety and worry.
Raspoutine looked at her, then replied quietly that he would be happy to pray forthe child, but that he thought she was just as much in need of prayer as her son because her state of moral health was far more alarming than Alexis’s physical one.
The Empress was so amazed that she could not find a reply to what appeared to her in the first moment to be an unsurpassed piece of insolence. Anna Wyrubewa saw what was taking place in her mind, and, addressing her in English, a language which they always spoke together, implored her not to feel offended, as the man really did not know what he was saying, sometimes being urged by a strength superior to his own to give utterance to thoughts he would never have dared to express otherwise. She then urged the Czarina not to carry on the conversation further, but to ask Raspoutine to begin at once praying for her welfare, and also for that of Russia and of the Imperial Family.
Alexandra acquiesced, and the preacher proceeded to set himself before the icon which, as is usual in all Russian houses, was hanging in a corner of the room. He began long litanies which he recited in a peculiar deep tone of voice, that rose up louder and louder as gradually he worked himself up into a state of religious frenzy akin to the one displayed by the dancing and howling dervishes in Turkey. But whether or not his manner or the tone of his supplications or his personal influence wasthe cause of it, the Empress as she listened to him felt calmer and quieter than she had done for years. It seemed to her as if a great peace was stealing upon her after the despair and the sadness in which her days had been spent during the last months. When at last Raspoutine’s orisons came to an end she was weeping silently, but all the nervous excitement under which she had been laboring at the beginning of the interview seemed to have disappeared and she looked more like a normal woman than she had done since the day when Orloff had said his last good-by to her in the boudoir of Anna Wyrubewa.
She silently extended her hand to the “Prophet,” saying as she did so:
“You have done me a great deal of good, and I thank you with all my heart. I shall ask you again to pray for me.”
It was thus that Alexandra Feodorowna met the man who was to have such a baneful influence over her whole life, whose fatal influence was to estrange her, still deeper than was already the case, from her subjects, and to give rise to the flood of calumnies in which she was ultimately to be drowned; and to perish, dragging along with her this mighty Russian Empire whose Crown she wore and whose people she had never understood nor even tried to understand.
Anna Wyrubewa was delighted to see thather beloved Czarina had really found some comfort in listening to Raspoutine’s prayers. She believed in the “Prophet” who had found favor in the eyes of the Lord, and whose intercession in regard to the little Alexis would be crowned with success. The woman was superstitious to the backbone, and perhaps more mystically inclined even than most Russians are, which is saying a good deal. She thought, at all events, that, once the Empress got to be persuaded that she had to look to God alone for the recovery of her son from a disease that had been pronounced to be incurable by the best medical authorities, she would no longer fret as she had done, but begin to look at things from a religiously fatalistic point of view. She hoped also for another thing, and that was that the Czarina, once she had been taught to look above for comfort and consolation, would cease to lament over the “might have been” that has already caused so much heartburnings in this world, and that she would leave off reproaching herself, as she was constantly doing, for the death of the one man she had cared for, whom in all innocence she had sent to his destruction, and who had bravely preferred to disappear rather than allow a stain to rest upon her honor. She had guessed the agony of the self-reproach under which the soul of Alexandra Feodorowna had almost collapsed, and the remorse which had racked it until herintelligence had almost snapped, through the moral as well as through the physical pain which had clouded all her faculties. She hoped, therefore, seriously and earnestly, that the prayers of Raspoutine might ease this mental distress which had transformed the Empress of All the Russias into a half-demented woman. When she saw that his prayers had over the latter the beneficent influence she had expected, she determined to do her best to induce her to give her confidence to this man in whom her exalted imagination saw a savior as well as a friend.
This was the real beginning of the Raspoutine intrigue, and it would have been a lucky thing for all those who came afterward to be concerned in it if it had stopped at this stage, and not been transferred to a more dangerous one, the stage upon which European politics had to be played and, unfortunately for Russia, played by utterly unskilful hands. The comedy of Raspoutine did not last longer than a few months. Its drama dragged on for years, and is not yet over by a long way.
AFTER she had made the acquaintance of Raspoutine the Empress changed considerably. For one thing, she became more cheerful and seemed once more to interest herself in what went on around her. She tried also to keep her mind away from the one morbid thought which had been haunting her, the thought that her son’s bad health was a punishment which God had sent her on account of her conduct in regard to Colonel Orloff. She had most undoubtedly loved the young officer, and she realized with a painful but clear perspicacity that if she had allowed him to go away when he wished to do so the tragedy which had culminated with his suicide would never have taken place. Her mind, which was dimmed as to so many other points, was quite awake to the terrible one that the man to whom her whole heart had belonged had died to save her honor and to prevent her good name from being compromised. This was quite sufficient to fill her soul with acute remorse, but apartfrom this she missed the companionship of this faithful friend before whom she could allow herself to speak about her sorrows and her trials just as if she had been an ordinary woman and not an Empress.
There were times when her grandeur oppressed her, and then it was that she longed for a confidant and friend before whom she would not be ashamed to bare her heart and unburden it. She felt so lonely amid the pomp and splendor which surrounded her, so solitary in her great Palace which was so very different from the simple house in which her childhood and youth had been spent, and she was such a stranger in a land she had not learned to love and where she had found herself confronted with hostility from the very first day that she had set her foot in it. Of course her children, and especially her son, constituted a great interest and a great preoccupation in her life, but their existence was not sufficient to fill it entirely. In moments when she thought herself forsaken by the world she would have given ten years of her future existence to be able to see once more the man who had died for her because he had found it impossible to consecrate his whole life to her service.
Raspoutine was a keen observer of human nature. Lurking behind his hopeless ignorance there were immense cunning and a natural intuition of what was going on in other people’sminds. Apart from this faculty, he always made it a point to try and find out as much as he could concerning the past of all persons with whom he happened to have dealings. He understood quite admirably the art of “drawing out” those with whom he conversed, and he could put together quite nicely the tangled threads which another man would never have gone to the trouble of trying to untwine. As soon as he had looked upon the Empress he had understood that she must have gone through some great grief which was not concerned with the state of health of her child alone, but which had deeper foundations. In the fashionable drawing-rooms where he was a welcome guest he had heard discussed more than once the personality as well as the conduct of Alexandra Feodorowna; he had come to the conclusion that the mystery which surrounded the death of Colonel Orloff was in some way connected with her, and not with Madame Wyrubewa alone. He applied himself, therefore, to discover what had really taken place.
For some time he could learn nothing, as no one seemed to know anything more than the bare fact of the suicide of the young officer. It is true that when he had asked Anna for the true version the latter had angrily denied any connection implying guilt, but Raspoutine, peasant though he was, understood sufficiently the character of a woman of the world to knowthat such denials were not worth much. Altogether he was puzzled, but continued, however, to put in an appearance at Tsarskoye Selo whenever he was asked to do so, and he was shown several times the little Heir to the Throne. The Empress had brought the babe to Madame Wyrubewa’s cottage several times for him to pray over. The “Prophet” had at once declared that the child would not die, and that there was every likelihood he would outgrow his weakness, a prophecy it had been relatively easy for him to make, considering the fact that before doing so he had taken good care to talk with a doctor of his acquaintance about the illness of Alexis, and had heard from him all that there was to hear on the subject, which was not much. The boy might live with care, and even get strong, once he had reached the years of adolescence; he might die from the effect of a hemorrhage, which the slightest accident might bring about. The whole thing was a matter of chance, and nothing else.
The Empress, however, became full of hope when Raspoutine told her not to worry unnecessarily, but to trust more to Providence than she had been doing. It happened just at that time that the little boy got stronger and better than he had been since his birth, and this fact inspired her with a hope such as she had never allowed herself to nurse sincethe day when she had realized to what a weak and frail piece of humanity she had given birth in the person of the only son and Heir of Nicholas II. She began to speak of the future, which she had hitherto not dared to do, and she seemed suddenly to think that this future might still hold some joys for her in reserve. As was but natural, she attributed this change in her feelings and mind to the influence of Raspoutine’s prayers, and as was also natural she felt grateful to him for having brought it about.
The crafty peasant, however, was not so satisfied as the Empress. He had begun to make great plans concerning her and the influence he meant to acquire over her person. Somehow he could not bring them to realization. He might have gone on for a long time in this state of uncertainty if he had not made just at that moment the acquaintance of one of the cleverest secret police agents the Russian Government had in its pay, Manassavitch-Maniuloff. This personage, whom I have described at length in another book, knew more about what went on in the Imperial Palace of Tsarskoye Selo than any one else in the world. During the time when the famous Plehwe occupied the post of Minister of the Interior he had had the Palace watched just as much as the houses of the people whom he suspected of not favoring his views and policy. Among theagents whom he had intrusted with this task Manassavitch-Maniuloff had occupied a foremost place. He was one of the most unscrupulous men alive, and, as the future proved, had but one aim in his existence, that of enriching himself, thanks to all kinds of shady speculations and blackmail he practised on a large scale. He knew, if others did not, all that had taken place in the house of Anna Wyrubewa on the day when Colonel Orloff had left it for the last time, but he had never divulged this secret, and had been content with waiting patiently until the day when he might be able to turn it into account and to make capital out of it. Always on the alert, and just as keen an observer as Raspoutine himself of the weaknesses of human nature, with the additional advantage of being a very well educated and cultured man, he very quickly grasped the importance of what the “Prophet” confided to him when he started to relate to his friend the details of his first interview with the Empress of All the Russias.
Maniuloff was very well posted as to all the details of the Philippe incident, together with its ridiculous end. When he had heard how much Alexandra Feodorowna had been impressed by the fervor of Raspoutine’s prayers, he suggested to the latter that he make use of the hypnotic faculties which he possessed in order to get the inexperienced and weak-mindedSovereign to become a tool in the hands of both. He gave him very detailed instructions as to how he was to proceed.
Armed with these instructions, Raspoutine started upon a campaign which brought Mr. Maniuloff to penal servitude, sent the Czarina to exile in Siberia, and himself to an untimely and bloody grave.
At the meetings at Anna Wyrubewa’s house, during which the “Prophet” not only prayed himself for the prosperity of the House of Romanoff, he also persuaded the Empress to pray, too, in accordance with the particular rites which he declared were indispensable to a perfect communion of the human spirit with God, and which consisted in numerous genuflexions, and other things of the same kind; in long fasts and hours spent in meditation with the face on the floor, in what grew in time to be a hysterical state of ecstasy. These meetings went on undisturbed for a considerable length of time, until one day Raspoutine informed Alexandra Feodorowna that he thought it wiser to discontinue them because certain things had been revealed to him by the Holy Ghost which had caused him to think that it would be better if he went away; otherwise he would be compelled to try and take her spiritually with him into regions whither perhaps she would not care to follow him. The Empress, of course, eagerly askedwhat he meant, upon which he replied that to perfect people such as he and she the Lord could grant the privilege of entering into relations with dead and gone people whom they had loved in this world; he did not know whether she would be able to go through this ordeal; therefore he thought it better to discontinue their meetings for the present.
The Czarina went home brooding upon what she had heard and with all her superstitious curiosity awakened. At first she tried not to think of what the “Prophet” had told her. Then she wondered whether she would be strong enough to face the ordeal of entering into communion with the other world, that world for which she had been longing, where had gone the one man she had loved beyond every other earthly thing. For some weeks she struggled against the temptation as it had been presented to her by Raspoutine; then at last she yielded to it, and asked Anna Wyrubewa to bring the “Prophet” once more to her house, as she wanted to speak with him again.
The adventurer demurred at first, finding one obstacle after another in order to decline the invitation which had been extended to him. At last he consented to an interview, but declared that he would insist that no one else be present at it, as the things which the “spirit” had commanded him to say to AlexandraFeodorowna were of such a secret nature that no one but herself could hear them. When he was introduced into the presence of the Sovereign he began by falling on his knees and praying with a fervor such as she had never seen him display before. At last he told the miserable, deluded woman that he had been commanded to say to her that there was one pure spirit now in another world who had been allowed to communicate with her through his medium; that he did not know who it was, but that if she wished to try the experiment she must, before attempting it, prepare herself for it, with long prayers and fastings, so as to be in a complete state of grace; otherwise the favor about to be conferred on her could not be awarded. By that time the Czarina had reached a nervous condition where anything Raspoutine told her would have been acceptable to her over-excited brain. She promised to conform herself to all the directions given to her, and three days later she met again the impostor in a place which he indicated to her, whither she went, accompanied by the faithful Anna. Madame Wyrubewa, however, was not admitted to the room where Raspoutine was waiting for the Empress. He stood before several holy images, with lamps burning before them.
The Empress had scarcely touched any food for three days; she had spent the time in longand almost continual orisons. She was just in a condition when any appeal to her superstition would be sure to meet with response. When she prostrated herself beside the “Prophet,” she had reached a state of exhaustion and excitement which made her an easy prey to any imposture practised by the unscrupulous. For about an hour Raspoutine kept praying aloud, invoking the spirits of heaven in an impressive voice, every word of which went deep into the heart of Alexandra Feodorowna. Suddenly he seized her by the arm, exclaiming as he did so: “Look! look! and then believe!”
She raised her eyes, and saw distinctly on the white wall the image of Colonel Orloff, which, by a clever trick had been flashed on it by a magic lantern held for the purpose by Manassavitch-Maniuloff.
The Empress gave one terrible cry and fell in a dead faint on the floor. Anna Wyrubewa, hearing her scream of agony, rushed into the room to find nothing but Raspoutine absorbed in deep prayer beside the inanimate form of his victim.
This was but the first scene of many of the same character. The Czarina recovered her scared senses with the full conviction that she had really seen the spirit of the man she had loved so dearly; she was very soon persuaded that he had been allowed to show himself toher and that he would henceforward watch over her and guide her with advice and encouragement in her future life. She quite believed that Raspoutine, whom she sincerely thought to be in total ignorance as to that episode in her life, was a real Prophet of God, and that, thanks to him, she would be able to communicate with the dead. Whether Anna Wyrubewa shared this conviction or not it is difficult to say, but it is not likely that either Raspoutine or Maniuloff confided in her. They knew too well the small reliance that, as a rule, can be placed upon feminine secrecy, and the game they were playing was far too serious for them to run the risk of compromising it by an indiscretion. It is therefore far more probable that they also played upon the superstitious feelings of the Empress’s friend, and that they used both ladies for the furtherance of their own nefarious schemes with as much unscrupulousness as consummate art.