At that first meeting I saw the Czarina press the little boy to her with the convulsive movement of a mother who always seems in fear of her child’s life. Yet with her the caress and the look which accompanied it revealed a secret apprehension so marked and poignant that I was struck at once. I had not very long to wait to know its meaning.
During the years following I had increasing opportunities of seeing Alexis Nicolaïevitch, who made a practice of escaping from his sailor nurse and running into his sisters’ schoolroom, from which he was soon fetched. And yet at times his visits would suddenly cease, and for quite a considerable period he was seen no more. Every time he disappeared everyone in the palace was smitten with the greatest depression. My pupils betrayed it in a mood of melancholy they tried in vain to conceal. When I asked them the cause, they answered evasively that Alexis Nicolaïevitch was not well. I knew from other sources that he was a prey to a disease which was only mentioned inferentially and the nature of which no one ever told me.
As I have already said, when I was released from my duties
| THE CZARINA, A FEW MONTHS BEFORE HER MARRIAGE. SUMMER OF 1894. | THE CZAREVITCH AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN MONTHS. (1905.) |
[Facing page 26.]
as tutor to Duke Sergius of Leuchtenberg in 1909 I could give more time to the Grand-Duchesses. I lived in St. Petersburg and visited Tsarskoïe-Selo five times a week. Although the number of lessons I gave had considerably increased, my pupils made but slow progress, largely because the Imperial family spent months at a time in the Crimea. I regretted more and more that they had not been given a French governess, and each time they returned I always found they had forgotten a good deal. Mademoiselle Tioutcheva, their Russian governess, could not do everything, for all her intense devotion and perfect knowledge of languages. It was with a view to overcoming this difficulty that the Czarina asked me to accompany the family when they left Tsarskoïe-Selo for a considerable time.