Yes, both are innocent, both are unhappy, and no one but God can help them. Poor, poor couple! I dread what all this may lead to; yet it were better if the end come soon.
March 7.
Her Highness is again with child.
May 12.
We are in Roshdestveno, the Crown Prince’s country house, seventy versts away from Petersburg, in the Koporsky district.
I have been ill for a long time. They thought I should die. The thought of dying in Russia was more terrible to me than death itself. Her Highness brought me here to Roshdestveno to give me a rest and chance of recovering my strength in the pure air.
Woods surround us; all is peaceful; nothing is heard save the rustling of leaves and the warbling of birds. The small river Oredesh hurries along like a torrent; its murmuring rises from beneath the steep slope of red clay, which is now shrouded in a transparent haze of young birch leaves, broken by the dark green of the firs.
The wooden country-house is built like the simple village huts. The principal hall, two stories high with a terem like the Moscow palaces, is not yet finished. Next to it stands a small chapel, with belfry and two bells, which the Tsarevitch delights in ringing himself. At the gates an old Swedish cannon and a small heap of iron balls which are covered with rust and overgrown with grass and yellow spring flowers. Altogether this is a real monastery—a kind of cloister in the woods.
The walls inside the houses are bare and show the beams; there is a scent of resin, with amber drops trickling like tears everywhere. Holy lamps are glimmering before the images. All is bright, fresh, clean, and innocently young.
The Tsarevitch is fond of this spot. He says he would like to live here always, and demands nothing better than to be left alone.