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Marfa Mouchanow
23 years of intimate life with the empress of all the Russias from her marriage to the day of her exile
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No harmony reigned at the Anitschkoff Palace during those early days of my mistress’ married life, and it is no wonder that the latter became more and more embittered as time went on. She felt herself neglected, and did nothing to please those whom she suspected of wilfully slighting her. She had a morbid desire to please, combined with a natural haughtiness, which made her not only sensible to a rebuff, but also desirous of avenging it. She did not care to be brushed aside by her relatives, and yet she was herself contributing to the cause of their actions, by her aloofness from all those who might have been of use to her. She did not understand St. Petersburg society; she considered it immoral and fast, and she made no secret of the fact, snubbing unnecessarily people strong enough to do her serious harm by their judgments and appreciations of her conduct and personality. The misunderstandings which caused her future unpopularity began from the very first hours of her arrival in Russia.
With her attendants, however, she was always kind and gracious, though distant in her manner. It was only after many years that she grew to have confidence in me, but then it was a complete one, and sometimes she would allow herself to give way in my presence to fits of despondency such as over-took her from time to time, during which I feel perfectly convinced she was not entirely responsible for her actions. Her mind, always prone to melancholy, made her look at things on their blackest side, and this partly accounts for the tendency towards mysticism which she was to develop later on, and which contributed, more than anything else, to the catastrophe that was to send her an exile to the solitudes of Siberia. She was never well balanced, and, when judging her, one must not forget that insanity was hereditary in the House of Hesse, a fact of which many people in Russia were aware, but of which it seems that the Imperial family were left in ignorance. Sensitive to a degree, she could not get rid of prejudices which she was inclined to adopt without any reason other than caprice, and prejudices are among the things which sovereigns ought never to entertain in regard to those whom they may happen to meet, or with whom they are surrounded. But with it all she was sweet and gentle, and good, and conscientious; a perfect mother, a most devoted wife, a staunch friend, incapable of meanness or of treachery, but destined by her very qualities to be always misunderstood, and never appreciated as she ought to have been. Amidst the pomp and splendour that surrounded her she was lonely; she felt isolated, and though she had found on her arrival in her new country hosts of relatives and courtiers, she had not met one single disinterested friend whom she could trust, or towards whom she could turn for advice and protection. The grandeur of her position put her, as it were, outside of the world, and, unfortunately, she was so overpowered by this grandeur that she did not even attempt to break through the barriers it had erected around her, and which divided her from the rest of mankind.
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