Suddenly one of the officers approached with a quick step and handed a telegram to Father. He read it aloud to all of us in a clear voice. “The little one will not die, do not let him be bothered too much.” (This was the sense of the telegram, the words are my own.) When we all heard these words, the air became charged with renewed hope. Alexei must have felt it too for he relaxed into a deep sleep. It continued for so long that Mother kept listening to his heart to make sure that he was still with us. When he awoke, the bleeding had stopped. Whether it was the medicine, the holy sacrament, or our prayers, as well as those of Rasputin, which caused the sudden turn for the better, we could not tell, but we knew that death had been averted. We had seen a miracle before our very eyes.
From that moment on, the boy’s ravaged body began to mend. We could only think of Rasputin as a holy man and the instrument in the healing of my brother. I recall seeing him later—only three or four times—but he made a deep impression on me. He was so different from other human beings. His piercing eyes seemed to look right through me even into the depths of my innermost self. He frightened me. When I first saw him he said, “Is this the little one?” and I was afraid that he would touch me, but he didn’t. He wore a long cassock with a cross hanging down on his chest. He looked like a monk. I was told he walked long distances barefoot, not having the necessary money to travel by train. But when I saw him he wore boots. By nature he was a son of the soil, like a wild plant nourished by accident.
Grigory Rasputin was not a monk at all except in a very loose sense. He was not even a member of any holy order. He was a Starets, a pilgrim and lay preacher among peasants. Could he be a biblical character come to life? I wondered. On his many journeys he had learned many of nature’s remedies. He had faith in them in the face of modern scientific medicine. He believed nature had made provision for man’s health as she had made provision for his food and drink. He knew an herb or berry for various maladies. His remedies were simple; it did not seem possible they could be effective. I heard he used to put dried berries in his tea. For bronchitis, he used high bush cranberries or red raspberry juice. We did not follow any of his remedies for my brother. We believed that ultimately God was the only Healer.
Father Vassiliev, our chaplain, held services twice a day in the camp chapel, which had been especially built in a large tent in the garden, until our departure from Spala in the late fall. Many different gifts were sent to Alexei during his illness, including some enamel and silver icons of St. Alexius and a Virgin and Christ in gold and decorated with precious stones. These and others came with the blessing of the churches in their incessant prayer for his health.
After this dreadful experience in Poland, Alexei was like something that had been lost but was now found. We could not do enough for him, but in spite of the attention we gave him, he was not spoiled. He was only an average boy and there was no reason for him to be different because he had been born to a royal family. There was a magnetism about the little fellow which no one could resist, yet Mother and Father tried to be firm with him. We all knew Alexei was the most important thing in Mother’s life; in fact, he was in all of ours. His condition meant misery or happiness to the whole family. Our first question every morning was, “How is Alexei?” We really did not need to ask because when Mother was happy, obviously he was all right.
Later we heard all kinds of atrocious stories spread about the illness of this innocent little boy. How could any human being think of anything so cruel and untrue is beyond my imagination.
Alexei was very sensitive and sometimes when Mother rebuked him he would run to Olga for sympathy. He adored Olga and said he was going to marry her. He was even jealous of her in a way, because he did not want her to pay attention to strangers when he was present. He had a talent for making us forget to scold him when he had done something wrong by distracting our attention. We all knew his strategy but it was hard to punish him when we saw him perched on a chair like a little sparrow, wondering what he would say to get our minds off the coming reprimand.
Late in the fall a few weeks before Christmas when the snow had buried the ground, Alexei was well enough to be moved to Tsarskoe Selo and there he made further recovery from his recent attack. This illness damaged the nerve and caused his left leg to become shorter. It required painful treatments and a special pad was placed in his shoe to build up the heel, so that he limped only slightly.
Mother had put so much of herself into the agonizing condition that it was hard for her to be herself again. For weeks she lay prostrate from her nursing and emotional strain but blissfully conscious of victory. She was disappointed not to be able to go to church to give fitting thanks for Alexei’s recovery, but the priest came to the house and conducted a special service in the palace chapel. When she felt well enough to be up and around again, Dr. Botkin found her heart again in a weakened condition and confined her to her room.
During these periods of rest, following the exhausting care of Alexei, Mother devoted herself to intensive religious study. The sparing of Alexei was God’s answer to her prayers; her gratitude was so consuming she lived in a realm of religious dedication. She had a rare collection of Bibles, which were brought to her from St. Petersburg and Moscow; these she studied, making comparisons of the various editions. She would then discuss what she had learned with Father who was no less interested but who did not have the time he would have liked to devote to the subject.