Your heartily devoted, etc.,
CONSTANTINE.
On October 27th, 1914, I received from him the following note: "It is just a month to-day since our beloved son was wounded—not 'slightly' as seemed at first to be the case, but mortally. God gives and God takes away. May His name be blessed now and for ever more."
It will be seen by the date of this note that Prince Oleg, then only twenty-one years of age, was one of the early victims of the war. At the time I little thought that the Grand Duke himself would soon follow his gifted son, Prince Oleg Constantinovitch.
Until the recent appearance of his biography, the fame of Prince Oleg was too little known, and it certainly had not travelled far outside Russia.
To me, this charming Prince was particularly dear; for I had seen him taking such affectionate care of my brother, Alexander Kiréef, who was already blind, ill and dying. The young man used to come, and talk to him, the principal defender of "Old Catholicism," of the efforts to revive the pure teachings of the Church, as it was before the division of the churches in the ninth century. No subject was dearer to my brother's heart, and, seeing the beneficial influence of these conversations, the young Prince returned to the subject many times in my presence.
One day he said: "General, nobody has ever been so useful as you in supporting the Old Catholic movement. You are my father's friend, and I am as proud of you as he is."
Yes, I shall never forget with what loving eyes the young man gazed into the clever beautiful face before him, where the eyes were already dim and on the point of being closed for ever. How terribly vividly some moments come back to our memory.
The talented child of a talented father, it was early evident that Prince Oleg had inherited the brilliant gifts of the Grand Duke. It is barely two years since The King of the Jews was produced with immense success at the Hermitage Theatre in the Winter Palace at Petrograd, the Grand Duke himself, as well as his sons, taking part in the performance.
Prince Oleg was clearly marked out as belonging to the elect of the earth, and by his early death not only has Russian literature been deprived of a future shining light, but the most cultured circles of Petrograd society are the poorer for the loss of a personality, touching and lovely in its goodness and unselfishness, and its youthfully enthusiastic and unswerving sense of duty and obligation.