Perhaps the Emperor’s obvious enjoyment of a ball was due to the fact that it is but seldom he can allow himself relaxation. There is not a busier man in the world. I once remarked to him that I find it impossible to get through the work of the day unless I follow a definite rule, and I asked him how he divided up his time.
“I get up early,” he answered, “and after a light breakfast I work until eleven. Then I take a walk and come back for luncheon at half-past twelve. After that comes the task of giving audiences to ministers and others, and, when work allows it, I take a drive before tea in order to get some fresh air. Immediately after tea I am busy again with my secretaries, and work with them lasts until dinner-time.”
“A strenuous day,” I said.
“But that is not the end of it,” he answered, smiling. “I am very often obliged to go back to work straight from the dinner-table, and sometimes it is not finished until far on into the night.”
The Emperor’s devotion to duty is in striking contrast to the almost traditional love of pleasure displayed by the Grand Dukes. A foreigner might easily be led to suppose that the House of Romanoff is at heart in sympathy with democratic ideas. The lack of formality at Court, the marriages between Grand Dukes and commoners, the presence of unlettered peasants at certain of the ceremonies of the Winter Palace, the share taken by some of the members of the Imperial family in amusements accessible to anybody who has money in his pocket, their supper parties in restaurants and their enjoyment of the café concerts of the capital—all these things might deceive the stranger. To know the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses is to realise that they neither understand the aspirations of the democracy nor sympathise with them, for, reflecting the glory of Autocracy they are more firmly convinced than any other Royal persons in Europe that a gulf divides them from the rest of mankind. And this conviction is so deep that they appear to believe that the most ordinary actions are ennobled by the mere fact that they are performed by persons in whose veins flows the Imperial blood.
The life led by most of them would be unbearable to me. A perpetual round of amusements becomes in the end as wearisome as the treadmill. How people who are not in the first flush of youth can day after day sit up until two o’clock in the morning, as too many of them do, eating unnecessary suppers and drinking champagne, I can not understand. High tea with the Emperor and Empress pleased me better than late suppers with the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses. Indeed, when I yielded to persuasion and went out with them for an evening’s amusement my sleepiness used to divert them immensely.
“Eulalia, you’re yawning,” they would say.
“It is two hours past my bedtime,” I would answer.
And then we laughed, and it was probably the Grand Duke Alexis who would suggest that we should all drive out to the Islands and have another supper at a café concert. Then I would strike and go home, scolding myself for sitting up so late and marvelling at the extraordinary vitality of the rest of the company, starting merrily on the long sledge drive to the Islands, where they would sit by the hour in a private room overlooking the little stage on which the unsuccessful artists of Paris danced and sang.
Perhaps it is because I am Spanish and not Russian that I failed to see the pleasure to be derived from spending the night in frivolity; for, in point of fact, there is nothing characteristically grand-ducal in this curious craze; it is simply Russian, and Moscow merchants will spend thousands of roubles in extravagant amusements between midnight and sunrise. The Grand Dukes are typical Russians. They have the virtues and the failings of the typical Russian, and—I am not sure whether it is a virtue or a failing—they are, like all the Russians I have ever met, exceedingly susceptible to feminine charms. To the Russian, love is everything, and in Russia women have more power to change men’s lives than in any other land.