Germany has always, as is but too well known to-day, maintained an army of spies in Russia. Very quickly a report of what was going on in Tsarskoye Selo reached the ears of William II. He saw his opportunity and forthwith wrote to his cousin, reminding her of their former friendship and telling her that he was entirely at her disposal to help her, by his knowledge of Russian affairs, which he professed was very great, and by his experience of the world.
The Empress caught at the opportunity, and from that day there was established between them relations of the closest intimacy, linking the Empress and the Lord of Potsdam. She took the habit of sending him a kind of diary of what she was doing and of what went on at the Russian Court—a diary in which she did not spare her mother-in-law, or her husband, whom she reproached with not taking her part more openly.
Of course it was not easy to carry on such a correspondence. The young Empress was closely watched, a fact of which she was but too well aware. She tried the medium of the German Embassy, but apart from the fact that it would have seemed a suspicious thing to send there letters in a regular way, the Ambassador, Prince Radolin, refused to be the means of forwarding messages of which he did not know the import, and did not care to be involved in an intrigue that would inevitably have brought him to grief if discovered. Some other way, therefore, had to be devised, and for a time it seemed as if it would be next to impossible to find any. Once or twice the Princess Hohenlohe, wife of the Imperial Chancellor, who, through the fact that she was the owner of large estates in Lithuania, often visited St. Petersburg, brought with her messages from the Kaiser to the Empress Alexandra, and took back with her to Berlin the latter’s replies. But this was not sufficient, and during the first visit paid by the Czar and his Consort to the German Court William and the young Czarina came to an understanding, after which their correspondence continued through the medium of friends of the Kaiser, who somehow appeared regularly in Russia whenever this was considered necessary.
People, and there were some, who happened to be in the secret of this intercourse pretended that one of the things which William II. urged upon his cousin was the necessity of getting rid of the influence of the Empress Marie, who, by reason of her avowed French sympathies, constituted a danger to German expansion and to German progress in the Muscovite Empire. The fact that for the present Alexandra Feodorowna was still considered a nonentity at the Russian Court was not of much importance because it was thought that if she were once to become the mother of a son she would immediately be raised to the position of an important personage in her husband’s house and country. And it must not be forgotten that in the course of the summer of 1895 the Empress was known to be about to give birth to her first child, who of course had to be a boy and an Heir to the Russian Throne.
Alas, alas for these hopes!
It was a Grand Duchess, Olga Nicholaiewna, who saw the light of day on a November morning in the Imperial Palace of Tsarskoye Selo. The disappointment was intense and extended to all classes of the nation, except among the members of the Imperial Family, who made no secret of the fact that they were delighted the little Hessian Princess they all disliked so intensely had not fulfilled her husband’s and her subjects’ expectations. The news of their joy reached the ears of Alexandra Feodorowna through the channel of the Kaiser, and added to her bitterness against her Russian relatives, which made itself felt in the affected manner with which she continually made allusions in their presence to her regrets at having accepted the position of Empress of All the Russias. She openly spoke of her contempt for this “land of savages” as she called it, and more than once her attendants heard her give vent to the exclamation of “My country, my beloved country, why am I parted from Thee?”
IV
A SAD CORONATION
CONTRARY to the custom observed at the Imperial Court of Russia, the young Empress insisted herself on nursing her baby. This met with general disapproval, not only from Marie Feodorowna, who, never having thought of the possibility of such an infraction of the traditions of the House of Romanoff, felt considerably affronted at this piece of independence on the part of her daughter-in-law; also from all the dowagers of St. Petersburg, who considered the innovation as infra dig. and declared that such a breach of etiquette constituted a public scandal.
Some enterprising ladies, who, by virtue of their own unimpeachable positions, thought themselves entitled to express their opinions, ventured to say so to Alexandra Feodorowna herself. She was indignant at what she termed an insult, turned her back on those voluntary advisers, and flatly declared that she would refuse henceforward to admit into her presence people who had forgotten to such an extent the respect due to her and to her position as the wife of their Sovereign.
Matters assumed an acute form, and during the first ball which took place that season in the Winter Palace the incident was discussed most vehemently. One wondered what would happen later on, and how the Empress would behave in regard to those givers of unsought advice in the future. But Providence interfered in favor of Alexandra Feodorowna, because she suddenly was taken with an attack of the measles, not the German ones this time, but the real, authentic thing, and the Court festivities about to take place were immediately postponed in spite of the protestations of different Court officials, who urged that they could very well take place in the absence of the Empress, and that their abandonment would be a serious blow to trade, which already was very bad, and which had discounted the profits it generally made during a winter season when the gates of the Winter Palace were thrown open with the usual lavishness and luxury displayed there on such occasions. Trade and its requirements were about the last thing which troubled the mind of Alexandra Feodorowna. She was of the opinion prevalent in Poland at the time of the Saxon dynasty that when Augustus was intoxicated the whole nation had to get drunk, and though she detested or pretended she detested Court balls and festivities, yet she was adverse to others enjoying them while she herself was debarred from doing so. Girls in their first season eager for showing off their pretty frocks, and lively young married women in quest of gaiety, were told to forego expectations of such pleasure, and the gates of the Palace remained closed for the first time in many years, to the general disappointment of St. Petersburg society and of its prominent members.