The feelings with which I anticipated my encounter with the medium were very different. Whatever might be my doubts with regard to the unfortunate Sophia—and I honestly began to think that the suicide of Menken had affected her brain—I had no doubt whatever that M. Auguste was a thoroughly unscrupulous man.
The imperial servant to whom I was handed over at the entrance to the Czar’s private apartments conducted me to what I imagine to have been the boudoir of the Czaritza, or at all events the family sitting room.
It was comfortably but plainly furnished in the English style, and was just such a room as one might find in the house of a London citizen, or a small country squire. I noticed that the wall-paper was faded, and the hearth-rug really worn out.
The Emperor of All the Russias was not alone. Seated beside him in front of the English grate was the beautiful young Empress, in whose society he finds a refuge from his greedy courtiers and often unscrupulous ministers, and who, I may add, has skilfully and successfully kept out of any entanglement in politics.
Rising at my entrance, Nicholas II. advanced and shook me by the hand.
“In this room,” he told me, “there are no emperors and no empresses, only Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas.”
He presented me to the Czaritza, who received me in the same style of simple friendliness, and then, pointing to a money-box which formed a conspicuous object on the mantel-shelf, he added:
“For every time the word ‘majesty’ is used in this room there is a fine of one ruble, which goes to our sick and wounded. So be careful, M. V——.”
In spite of this warning I did not fail to make a good many contributions to the money-box in the course of the evening. In my intercourse with royalty I model myself on the British Premier Beaconsfield, and I regard my rubles as well spent.
We all three spoke in English till the arrival of M. Auguste, who knew only French and a few words of Russian. I remarked afterward that the spirit of Madame Blavatsky, a Russian by birth, who had spent half her life in England, appeared to have lost the use of both languages in the other world, and communicated with us exclusively in French.