Читать книгу Confessions of the Czarina - Princess Catherine Radziwill - Страница 4

Table of Contents

I am not a coward, and it was not out of a feeling of uneasiness in regard to my personal safety, that I had not the courage to publish in my own name the book which, some thirty years ago, produced such a sensation when it appeared in the Nouvelle Revue of Madame Adam, under the title of “La Société de Berlin.” But I was living in Germany at the time, and though I would have felt delighted had the publication of this volume driven me out of the Prussian capital, from which I was to shake the dust from my shoes with such joy, a few years later, I had there relatives who would most undoubtedly have fared very badly at Bismarck’s hands, had my identity been disclosed. And once I am alluding to these distant times, it is just as well to say that the book in question had not at first been written for the benefit of the general public, but consisted of private letters addressed to Madame Adam, who, being happily still in the land of the living, can add many corroborative details. She suggested to me to publish some of these letters; I assented without suspecting the scandal which would follow, and which I do not regret in the very least, now that events have justified the mistrust with which the Prussian monster inspired me. The secret was well kept and one of the victims of it was poor Mr. Gérard, the secretary of Queen Augusta, who was accused of being the author of this book, an accusation that has clung to him ever since, and from which I am happy to relieve him.

The success of La Société de Berlin induced Madame Adam to publish other letters in the same style, devoted to other European capitals, with which, however, I had nothing to do, except those dealing with St. Petersburg life. The pseudonym of Count Paul Vassili remained a kind of public property divided between the Nouvelle Revue and my poor self. Just before the war, when, indignant at the manner in which Nicholas II. was compromising the work of his great father, I wrote the book Behind the Veil of the Russian Court, I bethought myself of assuming once more the old pseudonym. I was living at the time in St. Petersburg, as Petrograd was still called, and my brothers were in the Russian military service. I did not wish them to get into trouble. As it happened, my identity was suspected, and unpleasantness followed; but it is no stigma to have been ostracized by the Russian police under the old régime, so I did not mind or care.

I had not written the book out of any motives of revenge; on the contrary, I had many reasons to be personally grateful to Nicholas II. for various kindnesses I had met with at his hands; but it was impossible for any real Russian patriot to gaze unmoved at the German propaganda that was going on in the Empire, or to forgive its Sovereign Lady for disgracing herself together with the crown she wore, by the superstitious practices that had put her into the power of intriguing persons who ultimately brought about her own destruction, together with the ruin of the dynasty. It was impossible for any one who had known Russia during the reign of Alexander III., when the whole of Europe had its eyes turned upon her, and was clamoring for her alliance, not to feel deeply grieved in noticing the signs of the coming catastrophe which had been hovering in the air ever since the fatal Japanese war. The Monarch had become estranged from his people and his wife was the person responsible for it; or rather the people who had succeeded in getting hold of her mind. I do not wish here to throw stones at Alexandra Feodorowna, and in relating now what I know concerning her life, I will try not to forget that misfortune has got claims upon human sympathy, and that where a woman is concerned one is bound to be even more careful than in the case of a man.

The former Empress of All the Russias is to-day a prisoner, condemned to a horrible exile. She deserves indulgence; the more so that her follies, errors, and mistakes were partly due to a morbid state of mind, verging if not achieving actual insanity. Her existence, like that of the hero in the beautiful poem of Félix d’Arvers, had its secrets, and her soul its mysteries. The fact that she was a Sovereign did not shield her from feminine weaknesses, and, though she had always remained an innocent woman—a fact upon which one cannot sufficiently insist—in view of all the calumnies which have been heaped upon her, yet, like the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, to whom she has been more than once compared, she had also met on her path the devotion of a Fersen, as accomplished, as brave, and as handsome, as the Swedish officer whose name has gone down to posterity, thanks to his love for the poor Queen who perished on the scaffold of the Champs Elysées. While the latter was spared the sorrow of losing such a faithful friend, Alexandra Feodorowna was destined to be an unwilling witness of a cruel and unexpected tragedy, which ended brutally any dreams she might have nursed in the secret of her heart, and put her good name at the mercy of an infuriated man. Therein lies the drama of her life; a drama the remembrance of which probably haunts her to this day in the solitude of the lonely Siberian town, to which she has been banished by a triumphant Revolution.

This drama, which I am going to relate in the pages about to follow, was made the subject of a shameless exploitation that took advantage of the sorrow and despair to which it gave rise, that neither spared the woman nor respected the Sovereign, and that finally overthrew the Romanoff dynasty, and brought about the ruin of Russia. It seems to me that the revelation of it can harm neither its heroine, nor the country over which she reigned for twenty-two years; while, on the other hand, it may help the public to understand some of the causes of the great Revolution which was to be followed by such momentous consequences, not only for Russia, but also for the whole world.

Before relating it, I must, however, beg my readers to keep always in mind the fact that the Consort of Nicholas II. was not a normal woman; that madness was hereditary in the Hesse-Darmstadt family to which she belonged, twenty-two members of whom had, during the last hundred years or so, been confined in lunatic asylums; that consequently a different standard of criticism must be applied to Alexandra Feodorowna than to an ordinary person in full possession of all her intellectual faculties. The whole course of her history proves the truth of what I have just said, and claims indulgence for her conduct.

As for this history, I think that, such as it really was, few people have so far come to an exact knowledge of it, and that no one yet has related it as I am going to do. The information that has reached me has come almost day by day from sources which I have every reason to know are excellent. I have applied myself to eliminate many facts which appeared to me to be of too sensational a nature. I want also to point out to the reader that, though this book is called the Confessions of the Czarina, yet it does not contain one single word which I would like him to believe to have been uttered personally by the former Czarina. It is a story written ONLY by Count Paul Vassili, who accepts its responsibility in signing his name to it.

Paul Vassili.

February, 1918.