A royal son and mother

by freiherrin von Pauline Hügel

Amalie's life was now seemingly a brilliant one. Rich, young and beautiful, highly gifted, blessed with two dearly loved children, she was not happy. "In vain," she writes, "did I throw myself into the distractions and amusements of the great world. I brought back after these entertainments, visits, dances, theatricals, and other frivolities, only an increased, fruitless longing after something higher, something better, which I could speak of to no one. It was seldom that I did not cry myself to sleep. I felt like one of those actors who have to amuse others on the stage while in secret they are shedding bitter tears."

She felt a great longing to lead a quiet, retired life, devoted to study and the education of her children. But the obstacles in the way of such a plan seemed insurmountable. And now we can but admire how God Himself leads onward the soul that is unconsciously striving after Him.

Diderot, one of the French atheistic philosophers, was for a time living at the embassy as Prince Gallitzin's guest. Amalie opened her heart to him, and he approved of her wish to devote herself to "philosophy," and to give up the world and its frivolities. He undertook to obtain her husband's consent, which he did; and in future, whilst keeping on cordial terms, corresponding regularly, and meeting occasionally, the Prince and his wife pursued their very different ways apart.

Amalie never did things by halves. She took care quickly to burn her ships behind her. She cut herself off from all society, save that of a chosen set of intimate friends of like mind with herself. Every luxury of dress, which then was at its height, was rigorously renounced. Her beautiful dark hair, in which splendid, costly pearls had been wont to gleam, and which had been particularly admired, was shaven off, and a black flat wig worn instead. The gay embassy was abandoned for a plain little country-house situated between the Hague and Schevelingen; and, as a warning to visitors, over the door hung a sign-board with the strange device, Nithuys—"Not at home."

Amalie was now exceedingly happy. "Soon I felt such comfort in this new life, in constant intercourse with my children, in gradual advance in knowledge, and above all in the peace of conscience with which I every night retired to rest, that still higher thoughts found room in my mind. God and my own soul came to be the usual subjects of my reflections and investigations."

That Amalie Gallitzin's young children received a very strange education her most ardent admirers would not seek to deny. It must be remembered she was really educating herself—trying first one system and then another, anxious to put what she read into practice, and making many an experiment with the poor little boy and girl. Mimi, the daughter, being somewhat of an amiable non-entity, was affected comparatively little by the educational vagaries of her mother. At one time she and her brother were made to run about barefoot, at another to plunge into the cold river from a bridge, to "harden" them and make them fearless.

But with Mitri (Demetrius)—clever, impulsive, sensitive, refined—mistakes were likely to be fraught with evil consequences. That his mother, who loved him so dearly, and whom he resembled so much, later on, in his splendid spirit of self-sacrifice and utter unworldliness, sorely misunderstood him seems certain. From the first she had an impossibly high standard for the poor boy, who, naturally spirited, was forever being checked and veered round like a pony in a game of polo. This led to a seeming indecision and weakness of character very foreign to his real nature. If you do not know where you stand, it is difficult to "put your foot down." Now, to his mother, who was all fire and energy, anything like weakness and half-heartedness was of all things most intolerable. His father, who saw the boy but seldom, judged far more correctly when he said: "That lad has really a tremendous will of his own, and will always go counter to the stream."

And yet all the different systems of philosophy and education (some absurd enough) that were tried on herself and her two children by the Princess, were adopted and abandoned with such earnestness of purpose, such a single-eyed desire to do not only right but the best, that we feel the Sacred Heart must have been touched; and we do not wonder that our generous God should have made all things co-operate unto good to that favored mother and son, who were by and by to love Him with a love nothing short of heroic.

Demetrius had a prodigious memory, and in his old age could still describe how when he was four years old he was taken to see the Empress Catherine, who petted the pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed child, and then and there presented him with that ensign's commission in the Russian army which was destined to be the source of so much trouble. He remembered those early days and their sumptuous elegance, in which, as to the manner born, he had been the little tyrant, ordering about servants and serfs in most lordly style. But soon all that was changed: he was required to live in quite a poor way, to wait upon himself, and not to be spared the rod for childish misdemeanors.

In a memorandum from the Princess to the children's tutor we find the following: "Keep a sharp lookout on the children's chief faults. Mimi is talkative, vindictive and quarrelsome; and Mitri gives me much pain by his inveterate laziness and absurd want of pluck." Very serious are her letters to her son, who was, after all, but a little boy. On his fourteenth birthday she wrote to him: