Count Brummer and the Grand Chamberlain Berkholz having been relieved from their duties about the Prince, the Empress named as his attendant General Prince Basil Repnine. A better appointment could not have been made, for Prince Repnine was not only a man of honour and probity, he was also a man of talent, a very worthy man, candid and straightforward. For my own-self, I had every reason to be satisfied with the conduct of Prince Repnine. For Count Brummer I felt no regret; he wearied me with his eternal politics, he smelt of intrigue; while the frank and soldier-like character of Prince Repnine inspired me with confidence. As for the Grand Duke, he was delighted to get rid of his pedagogues, whom he hated. In quitting him, however, they left him with no slight anxiety at finding himself at the mercy of the intrigues of Count Bestoujeff, who was the prime mover in all these changes, made under the plausible pretext of the majority of his Imperial Highness in his duchy of Holstein. Prince Augustus, my uncle, was still at St. Petersburg, watching the administration of the Grand Duke’s hereditary territory.
In the month of May we moved to the Summer Palace. At the end of the month the Empress placed with me, as chief housekeeper, Madame Tchoglokoff, one of her maids of honour, and her relative. This was a thunderbolt for me. This lady was altogether in the interest of Count Bestoujeff, extremely silly, spiteful, capricious, and very selfish. Her husband, Chamberlain to the Empress, was then gone on some sort of mission from her Majesty to Vienna. I wept a great deal on seeing her arrive, and all the rest of the day. I was to be bled on the following day. In the morning the Empress came to my room, and seeing my eyes red, said to me that young women who did not love their husbands were always crying; that my mother, however, had assured her I had no repugnance to marrying the Grand Duke; that, besides, she had not forced me; that, as I was married, I must not cry any more. I remembered the instructions of Madame Krause, and said to her, I beg your pardon, Madame, and she was appeased. Meanwhile the Grand Duke came in, and this time the Empress received him very graciously, and then went away. I was bled, and indeed I required it; I then went to bed, and wept the whole day. The next day, the Grand Duke drew me aside in the course of the afternoon, and I saw clearly that they had given him to understand that Madame Tchoglokoff had been placed with me because I did not love him. But I cannot understand how they expected to increase my attachment for him by giving me that woman; and so I told him. As to placing her with me as an Argus, that was a different matter. But if this was their object, they ought to have chosen some one less stupid; and, besides, it was not necessary for this purpose to be spiteful and malevolent. Madame Tchoglokoff was thought to be extremely virtuous, because she loved her husband to adoration. She had married him for love: so excellent an example placed before me would perhaps persuade me to imitate it. We shall see how far the experiment was successful. In all probability, it was the circumstance which I am about to relate which precipitated this arrangement. I say precipitated, because I believe that, from the beginning, Count Bestoujeff had it in view to surround us with his creatures. He would gladly have done the same in the case of the Empress also, but that was not so easy.
The Grand Duke, at the time I arrived in Moscow, had in his service three domestics named Czernicheff, all three sons of grenadiers in the bodyguard of the Empress. Their fathers held the rank of lieutenant, which they received as a recompense for having aided in placing the Empress on the throne. The oldest of the Czernicheffs was cousin to the two others, who were brothers. The Grand Duke was very fond of all three. They were the persons most in his confidence, and were really very useful. All three were tall and well made, especially the oldest. The Duke made use of him in all his commissions, and several times in the day he sent him to me. He it was, too, whom the Duke made his confidant when he did not care to come to me. This man was on very intimate and friendly terms with my valet Yevreinoff, and through this channel I often knew things which I should otherwise have been ignorant of. Besides, both of them were attached to me heart and soul, and I often obtained information from them, on a variety of matters, which it would have been difficult to have procured otherwise. I do not know in reference to what it was that the oldest of the Czernicheffs said one day to the Grand Duke, “she is not my intended, but yours.” This expression made the Grand Duke laugh. He related it to me, and from that time it pleased his Imperial Highness, when speaking to me, to call me his intended, and Andrew Czernicheff your intended. After our marriage Andrew Czernicheff, to put a stop to this badinage, proposed to his Imperial Highness to call me his mother, and I, on my part, called him my son. Now between the Grand Duke and myself there was always some reference to this son, for he was excessively attached to the man; and I also liked him very much.
My servants were greatly disturbed on this account; some through jealousy, others from apprehension of the consequences which might result both for them and for us. One day when there was a masked ball at court, and I had gone to my room to change my dress, my valet Timothy Yevreinoff took me aside, and told me that he and all my servants were terrified at the danger into which he saw me plunging. I asked him what he meant. He said, “You speak of nothing and think of nothing but Andrew Czernicheff.” “Well,” I said, in the innocence of my heart, “what harm is there in that? He is my son. The Grand Duke likes him as much and more than I do; and he is devoted and faithful to us.” “Yes,” he replied, “that is all very true; the Grand Duke can do as he pleases; but you have not the same right. What you call kindness and attachment, because this man is faithful and serves you, your people call love.” The utterance of this word, which had never once occurred to me, was a thunderbolt; first, on account of the opinion of my servants, which I called rash; secondly, on account of the condition in which I had placed myself, without being aware of it. He told me that he had advised his friend Czernicheff to pretend illness in order to put an end to these remarks. This advice Czernicheff followed, and his feigned illness lasted pretty nearly to the month of April. The Grand Duke was much concerned about him, and spoke of him continually to me. He had not the slightest suspicion of the real circumstances. At the Summer Palace Andrew Czernicheff again made his appearance. I could no longer meet him without embarrassment. Meanwhile the Empress had thought proper to make a new arrangement with the servants of the court. They were to serve in turn in all the rooms, and Andrew Czernicheff like the rest. The Grand Duke often had concerts in the afternoon, and he himself played the violin at them. During one of these concerts, which usually wearied me, I went to my own room. This opened into the great hall of the Summer Palace, which was then filled with scaffoldings, as they were painting the ceiling. The Empress was absent; Madame Krause had gone to her daughter’s, Madame Sievers; and I did not find a soul in my room. From ennui I opened the door of the hall, and saw at the other end Andrew Czernicheff. I made a sign to him to approach; he came to the door, though with much apprehension. I asked him if the Empress would return soon. He said, “I cannot speak to you; they make too much noise in the hall; let me come into your room.” I replied, “That I will not do.” He was outside the door and I within, holding the door half open as I spoke to him. An involuntary impulse made me turn my head in the direction opposite to the door at which I stood, and I saw behind me at the other door of my dressing-room, the Chamberlain, Count Divier, who said to me, “The Grand Duke wishes to see you, madam.” I closed the door of the hall, and returned with Count Divier to the apartment where the Grand Duke was giving his concert. I have since learnt that Count Divier was a kind of reporter employed as such, like many others about me. The following day, which was Sunday, after mass, we learnt—that is, the Grand Duke and I—that the three Czernicheffs had been placed as lieutenants in the regiments stationed near Orenburg; and in the afternoon of this day Madame Tchoglokoff was placed with me.
A few days afterwards, we received orders to prepare to accompany the Empress to Reval. At the same time, Madame Tchoglokoff told me from her Majesty that, for the future, her Imperial Majesty would dispense with my coming to her dressing-room, and that if I had any communication to make to her it must not be made through any one but Madame Tchoglokoff. In my own mind, I was delighted with this order, which relieved me from the necessity of being kept standing among the Empress’ women; besides, I seldom went to her dressing-room, and then but rarely saw her. During the whole time that I had been going there I had not seen her more than three or four times, and, generally speaking, whenever I went, her women quitted the room one after the other. Not to be left there alone, I seldom stayed long either.
In the month of June the Empress set out for Reval, and we accompanied her. The Grand Duke and I travelled in a carriage for four persons; Prince Augustus and Madame Tchoglokoff made up its complement. Our plan of travelling was neither agreeable nor convenient. The post-houses or stations were occupied by the Empress; we were accommodated in tents or in the outhouses. I remember that on one occasion, during this journey, I dressed near the oven where the bread had just been baked; and that another time, when I entered the tent where my bed was placed, there was water in it up to the ankle. Besides all this, the Empress had no fixed hour, either for setting out or stopping, for meals or repose. We were all, masters and servants, strangely harassed.
After ten or twelve days’ march, we reached an estate belonging to Count Steinbock, forty verstes from Reval. From this place the Empress departed in great state, wishing to reach Catherinthal in the evening; but somehow it happened that the journey was prolonged till half-past one in the morning.
During the entire journey, from St. Petersburg to Reval, Madame Tchoglokoff was the torment of our carriage. To the simplest thing that was said, she would reply, “Such a remark would displease her Majesty;” or, “Such a thing would not be approved of by her Majesty.” It was sometimes to the most innocent and indifferent matters that she attached these etiquettes. As for me, I made up my mind, and during the whole journey slept continually while in the carriage.
From the day after our arrival at Catherinthal, the court recommenced its ordinary round of occupations; that is to say, from morning till night, and far into the night, gambling, and for rather high stakes, was carried on in the ante-chamber of the Empress, a hall which divided the house and its two stories into two sections.
Madame Tchoglokoff was a gambler; she induced me to play at faro like the rest. All the favourites of the Empress were ordinarily fixed here when they did not happen to be in her Majesty’s room, or rather tent, for she had erected a very large and magnificent tent at the side of her apartments, which were on the ground floor, and very small, as was usually the case with the structures of Peter I. He had built this country residence, and planted the garden.