A few days later two sisters, well-known also in Petrograd society, attempted suicide. These were the Princess X... and Mademoiselle Trepoff, friends of the aforementioned. The Princess shot herself with a revolver and her life was in danger for many days, but she recovered at the end of that time. It was the same with her sister, who threw herself under a train at the Nicholas station. I had met her only a few days before. It is said that since then she has to wear a heel made of metal to replace the one reduced to a pulp by the wheels of the train. When recovered they reappeared in society without exhibiting any shame. Incredible, is it not?
Some spoke of an unhappy love affair, others of politics; my humble opinion is the general one, that they found themselves compromised by the arrest of their friend.
The affair was suppressed, thanks to the influence of their Uncle Trepoff, the chief of police, and without any ill-feeling, poor man, on his part!
Every day some fresh bomb explosion took place, causing many victims in some part or other of the Empire.
One day I happened to be walking on the Champs de Mars—where so many of the Revolutionaries who perished last March [1917] now lie buried in their red coffins—when my attention was drawn to a certain individual with a most evil countenance walking a few paces in front of me; when all of a sudden an izvo—diminutive of the word meaning “hackney carriage”—drew up quite close to me, and two men jumped out precipitately, throwing themselves on this individual and dragging him along with them into the carriage. One of them was a member of the military police, and the other a member of the secret police in plain clothes.
They had the greatest trouble to secure their prisoner, who was a most vigorous ruffian and made use of all his strength to free his hands so as to reach his coat pocket, which contained a bomb no doubt, and which he evidently intended to throw at one of the Grand Dukes, who happened to drive past in his equipage a few minutes later, while the cab with its struggling trio dashed off in another direction.
I wrote to one of my friends twelve years ago: “May Society here [Petrograd], so brilliant but often so light and so indifferent, not experience one day the horrors and crimes of our revolution in France of 1793.”
People spoke, it is true, of the great and bloody contest that was unfolding itself in Manchuria with airs of deep regret, due, however, much more to the shame inflicted by successive defeats and by their notable inferiority than to the poignant feeling they should have experienced at seeing their country tried and unhappy. I thought them really much too philosophical; it seemed to me as though they were talking about a war which did concern their country—Allied, perhaps, but not their own. The French war in the Soudan, though on so small a scale, made much more sensation in France. And yet how many homes were in mourning in Petrograd, in that society which I frequented, and of which alone I was in a position to judge.
The salons were partly closed and there were no balls, but the theatres were by no means empty, and on the evenings of the greatest reverses were full of uniforms of every branch of the forces; even on the evening when the great naval defeat of Tsussima—May the 14th, the anniversary of Coronation Day—which scattered and destroyed the fleet, was known at Petrograd, the Russian Opera and the theatres were crowded with naval officers. This disaster did not occur as a surprise to poor Admiral Rogestvensko, for he had felt he was going to his doom. For the rest, this regrettable aberration was remarked in high places, for the “Autocrat” made known by all the newspapers that these officers should not show themselves in public for some days at least.
On the 17th of February Grand Duke Sergius-Alexandrovitch, Governor-General of Moscow, was blown to atoms in the streets of Moscow, an event which came as a real shock to me. I remember my Uncle de Baranoff being at once informed by telephone of his death.