I found the Princess quite charming; “elle avait dû avoir beaucoup de ‘chien,’” as we say in France, and still had a very merry twinkle in her eye which caused me great amusement. Being a Bagration, she was descended from the Royal House of Georgia, and her husband—who had been dead some years—had held numerous high appointments.
One day I went with my aunt to see Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, sister of the Tzar—who has since divorced the Grand Duke, to marry his aide-de-camp—she lived quite near us; also Grand Duke and Duchess of Leuchtenbergh. This corner of the world seemed to be peopled with nothing but Royalties!
One of our frequent visitors was a very dignified and decided though kind looking cousin of my uncle’s, also a Princess Cherwachidze, who was maid of honour to Grand Duchess Eugénie of Oldenburg.
It pleased my uncle sometimes to be extremely gay and amusing, and I remember what fun we had together singing “Viens, Poupoule, viens.” This was then a favourite refrain of the Paris Boulevards, which the Russians adored.
There were at Oranienbaum, near Peterhof, a great number of soldiers getting ready to start for the theatre of war, wearing caps covered with a sort of greenish grey cloth and blouses of the same shade, with khaki coloured great-coats, which they always wore. The officers wore green tunics and dark caps.
One evening at six o’clock we went to see them take their departure and I never shall forget the beauty of the setting for that sad scene—the Baltic seemed to have borrowed something of the deep warm tones of the Mediterranean. Cronstadt stood out, in the distance across the water, as clear against the radiantly blue sky as if it had been painted for some stage scenery.
There they were, bands playing and flags waving in the breeze, all those gallant fellows having mustered from many different parts of the Empire, all ready to step into that long brick-red train with the Imperial Arms emblazoned on it, which would convey them far, far away to other Steppes, but desert ones these—and terrible.
How many restrained tears in those dark or blue eyes, to which pain and suffering had given an almost terrible expression, and how many never to be realized dreams were enclosed behind these broad foreheads. How melancholy—sad, too—were the expressions on the fresh faces of the young, as on the wrinkled ones of the old peasant women with their heads almost entirely concealed beneath wide gaudy coloured handkerchiefs.
From time to time the stillness of this great pathetic scene was disturbed by the shrill and joyous tones of a voice of a child too young as yet to understand the true and awful significance of this—for many—the last earthly farewell. How numerous they were—these poor little innocents!
When the bell announcing the starting of the train rang for the third tune, one last and long hurrah was raised by the entire sad-hearted multitude; and it was terrible to think of the hardships those poor fellows would be subjected to during that long journey to accomplish across Siberia, forty of them in one truck, an open one very often!