He was a good raconteur and I enjoyed talking with him. His wife, also, was charming.
An agreeable couple were Count and Countess Ruggieri-Laderchi, the Italian Military Attaché and his wife. They often entertained and were very pleasant. She was a Russian, née Staël-Holstein. She told complacently how a fortune teller had predicted that she would be an Ambassadress. May that happen to her if it is still her wish, as then she would be quite in her rôle; but on leaving Russia she settled down in a provincial town in Italy.
The evenings at General Gelinsky’s were also charming; he was a friend of my aunt’s, and one met at his house many officers of the Guards and some diplomats.
During nearly the whole of that winter, the German Ambassadress used to display on her head, and nearly as big as it, planted well in the middle of her coiffure, a yellow flower resembling an immense dandelion, the flower commonly called by us in France pissenlit. I told myself that this conception of the fashions must have originated on the banks of the Spree; but yet this headgear did not seem to clash with the rest of her tasteless get-up, for all bore the stamp of Berlin. The Embassy was not beautiful and not well arranged, a succession of little drawing-rooms, which I thought ugly.
My friend Mademoiselle Thecla de Grelle did the honours for her father at the Belgian Legation, and in a very charming manner too. I had some very good times there. She still sends me news of herself from Copenhagen, where she lives now with her brother, Secretary to the Legation.
At Petrograd the corps diplomatique formed one large family who met constantly, which was quite delightful.
A charming couple were the Count and Countess Wrangel, who succeeded the Gyldenstolpes at the Swedish Legation. The Count was the Minister; she was French by birth and very amiable. I have met them since in London, where they are still, and where I have always been touched by their kind welcome.
A great meeting place for our set was on the opposite side of the Neva, at the house of a certain lady of foreign nationality, who was very rich and who used to receive a great deal; but I heard lately that she had left her husband and her home for Germany in company with a young Hun who might easily be her son, as she was by no means a young woman twelve years ago, although a very well preserved one and always beautifully dressed. She could have easily been a grandmother even in those days. As in the fable, the deserted husband mounts to the tower to see if there is a cloud of dust on the road; but in vain! If there is any dust, the wind of the Neva is the only cause of it.
The Bulgarian Minister was then Monsieur Stancioff; his wife, French by birth, had been Maid of Honour of the Princess Clémentine, mother of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and a daughter of Louis-Philippe, King of the French, who had been married to the Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as far back as 1843. Ferdinand of Bulgaria, thus being partly French and partly German, had always been considered to have adopted his mother’s nationality in preference to his father’s, but owing to his second marriage with a German Princess—Eleonora de Reuss—and the promise of great things from the Kaiser, the head of this mushroom Tzar was completely turned in the wrong direction.
Madame Stancioff was a very intelligent woman and certainly without any préjugés. One had heard that the Prince had taken a great fancy to her, and after her marriage with a cavalry officer he put him into the Diplomatic service, and so settled him in life. After Petrograd they came to Paris, where the Legation was maintained on a great scale by Ferdinand, who evidently remained faithful to his friends. About the beginning of the war they were appointed to Rome, and I saw in the papers that, being suspected of Francophile tendencies, the Kaiser had asked the renegade Ferdinand not to let them occupy that post any longer. At their house I also received a charming welcome.