I was thunderstruck. Yet neither the Czar nor the Czarina blamed me in the slightest. So far from it, they seemed to be intent on preventing me from despairing of a task my pupil’s malady made so perilous. As if they wished by their example to make me face the inevitable ordeal, and enlist me as an ally in the struggle they had carried on so long, they associated me in their anxieties with a truly touching kindness.
The Czarina was at her son’s side from the first onset of the attack. She watched over him, surrounding him with her tender love and care and trying by a thousand attentions to alleviate his sufferings. The Czar came the moment he was free. He tried to comfort and amuse the boy, but the pain was stronger than his mother’s caresses or his father’s stories, and the moans and tears began once more. Every now and then the door opened and one of the Grand-Duchesses came in on tip-toe and kissed her little brother, bringing a gust of sweetness and health into the room. For a moment the boy would open his great eyes, round which the malady had already painted black rings, and then almost immediately close them again.
One morning I found the mother at her son’s bedside. He had had a very bad night. Dr. Derevenko was anxious, as the hæmorrhage had not been stopped and his temperature was rising. The inflammation had spread further and the pain was even worse than the day before. The Czarevitch lay in bed groaning piteously. His head rested on his mother’s arm, and his small, deathly-white face was unrecognisable. At times the groans ceased and he murmured the one word “Mummy!” in which he expressed all his sufferings and distress. His mother kissed him on the hair, forehead, and eyes, as if the touch of her lips could have relieved his pain and restored some of the life which was leaving him. Think of the tortures of that mother, an impotent witness of her son’s martyrdom in those hours of mortal anguish—a mother who knew that she herself was the cause of his sufferings, that she had transmitted to him the terrible disease against which human science was powerless! Now I understood the secret tragedy of her life! How easy it was to reconstruct the stages of that long Calvary.
CHAPTER IV
THE CZARINA, ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA
THE Czarina, Alexandra Feodorovna, formerly Alice of Hesse, and fourth child of the Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse and Alice of England, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, was born at Darmstadt on June 6th, 1872. She lost her mother early in life, and was largely brought up at the English Court, where she soon became the favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who bestowed on the blonde “Alix” all the tender affection she had had for her mother.[8]
At the age of seventeen the young princess paid a prolonged visit to Russia, staying with her elder sister Elisabeth, who had married the Grand-Duke Sergius Alexandrovitch, a brother of the Czar Alexander III. She took an active part in Court life, appeared at reviews, receptions, and balls, and being very pretty was made a great fuss of.