PETERHOF, THE IMPERIAL CHILDREN
fuss of the Court—in my view a somewhat injudicious step to have taken considering all things.
Princess Cherwachidze, née Baronne de Nicolay, my father’s first cousin, is small and slender, very refined and fragile, so fragile indeed that one is almost afraid of breaking her when embracing her, but possessing in her heart an unfathomable depth of kindness and devotion.
My dear little aunt—Aunt Maka, as I called her—seemed to be in love, so much in love with her husband that morning and night, especially when at Petrograd, she rushed off as fast as she could cover the ground to the telephone to converse with the object of her adoration, who was always in waiting on his Imperial Mistress wherever she happened to be—Gatchina, Peterhof, Tsarskoë-Celo or Petrograd, at the Anitschkoff Palace. The conversation was always the same and in her soft emotional voice she commenced:—
“Comment vas-tu?” The reply I never caught. “Allons tant mieux.” Idem. “Tu vas venir aujourd’hui, n’est-ce pas?” I guessed the reply to be in the negative. “Et demain?” Again in the negative. “Alors tu me diras. Au revoir.” Then it was over. He was not often able to respond to these summonses.
She seemed quite satisfied to know that her spouse was in good health—there was no alternative—and then again would rush off across the drawing-rooms back to her comfortable study where she always had a vast correspondence to attend to, and to reply to in that beautiful calligraphy of hers—everything she undertook to do was executed to perfection. Every day she received several begging letters, some from people desirous of obtaining employment, others seeking for Imperial audiences for some protégé or other—and these latter simply poured in!
Again at night, she used to ring up my uncle on the telephone which, alas, more often than not gave no reply; then my poor little aunt became quite thoughtful and sadly consoled herself by saying, “Comme son service est fatiguant!”
She had also a conversation on the telephone very often with Grand Duke Nicholas Michaelovitch who had been a friend of hers for many years. His Imperial Highness sometimes came to see us in the evening and we always knew when he had entered the apartment by the tremendous clatter of his scabbard on the parquet floor of the ante-room and the clinking of his spurs as he walked. He was of a jovial disposition and spoke with a very loud voice. He was besides un gai causeur and extremely literary, amongst his last publications was La Famille des Strogonoff.