Confessions of the Czarina

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

This disappointment, however, was soon forgotten in the expectation of the Coronation about to take place, the date of which had been fixed for the 15th of May. Great preparations were made for it. Those who remembered the pomp which had attended that of Alexander III., thirteen years before, wondered whether the ceremony about to be repeated would be as brilliant as the one which they had not yet forgotten. The whole of St. Petersburg society, with few exceptions, repaired to Moscow for the solemn occasion, and all the Foreign Courts sent representatives to attend the festival. One tried to guess how the young Empress would carry herself through the trying ordeal, and whether she would condescend for once to show herself amiable toward her subjects in the ancient capital of Muscovy, the population of which had always professed far more independence of opinions than that of St. Petersburg, where conversations were more restrained and guarded, in view of the constant presence of the Imperial Family within its walls. The one thing which everybody was looking forward to was the public entry of the young Sovereigns in the old town, an entry which was to be made with unusual pomp and solemnity.

I remember very well the day of the ceremony. I had a seat in a house situated on the great square opposite the residence of the Governor-General of the town, a position which was still occupied by the Grand-Duke Sergius. Together with some friends, we watched the long line of troops, followed by representatives from all classes in the country; by Court officials on horseback, in gold-embroidered uniforms, behind whom rode, surrounded by a brilliant staff, the Czar himself, mounted on a gray charger; a small, slight figure, contrasting vividly with his father thirteen years before. Nicholas II. had already acquired the expression of utter impassibility which was never to change in the future. He surveyed with a grim look the vast crowds massed in the streets, who cheered him vociferously, but he did so with a look that expressed neither pleasure nor disappointment, but simply indifference mixed with tediousness.

Behind him came a long row of State carriages all gold and precious stones, the diamonds which glittered on them being valued at several millions of rubles. In the foremost, the carriage of Catherine the Great, with an immense Imperial Crown on its top, rode the Dowager Empress dressed in white and looking as young almost as she had done on the day of her own Coronation. Hurrahs without end greeted her appearance; the people cheered her with an enthusiasm such as had rarely been seen in Russia, while, pale and trembling, she bowed incessantly from right to left, with tears streaming down her cheeks. These hurrahs followed her all along her way from the distant Petrowsky Palace to the gates of the Kremlin, which she entered at last, amid the acclamations of the multitude assembled to see her pass.

Immediately behind her, divided only by a squadron of cavalry, drove her daughter-in-law, also dressed in a white gown, and sparkling with all the jewels belonging to the Crown, which she had assumed for the first time on that solemn day. A dead silence, contrasting painfully with the frenzied reception awarded to Marie Feodorowna, greeted her successor on the Throne of Russia. This contrast was so evident that everybody present was struck with it, and something like a presentiment of evil passed through the mind of most of the assistants of this strange scene. One remembered Marie Antoinette at Rheims during the Coronation of Louis XVI. when she also had been received with silence and contempt by the

French nation, who a few years later was to send her to the scaffold.

Perhaps something of the kind crossed the mind of Alexandra Feodorowna herself, because it was evident that she was suffering from a violent desire to give vent to tears and rage. I saw her from the place where I stood, through the open large windows of the State carriage in which she sat quite alone, according to the requirements of etiquette, immovable like an Indian goddess, looking neither right nor left, but straight before her, her haughty head thrown back, two red spots on her cheeks, and a set expression on her thin lips closely joined together. She understood but too well the meaning of this strange reception she was awarded; too proud to complain, she seemed to ignore it. Once and once only did I see her start, and that was when, amid the profound silence which prevailed around her, a voice, that of a child, was heard exclaiming:

“Show me the German, mamma, show me the German!”

And with this cry in her ears and in those of other listeners, the big coach with Alexandra Feodorowna sitting in it, in all the splendor of her white dress and glorious jewels, vanished in the distance within the walls of that old fortress called the Kremlin, which, seen in the glamour of dusk already falling, looked more like a prison than a palace.

Three days later I was to look once more on the slight and erect figure of the Consort of Nicholas II. as she emerged out of the bronze gates of the Cathedral of the Assumption walking under a canopy of cloth of gold and ermine, with ostrich plumes towering on its top, the Crown of the Russian Empresses standing high upon her small head and the long mantle of brocade embroidered with the black eagles of the Romanoffs trailing from her shoulders. She looked magnificent, but there was something in the expression of her haughty features which reminded one of the prophecy of the Italian sculptor in regard to Charles Stuart: “Something evil will befall that man; he has got misfortune written on his face.”