Thus, though striving to do his best for his subjects and for his nation, yet, surrounded as he was by a corrupt Ministry and a more corrupt Court, this big, striking man in blue serge was, perhaps, next to the Sultan of Turkey, the best-hated man in all Europe.
My own position was a somewhat singular one. A few months after my appointment to Petersburg from Brussels I had been able to render His Majesty a slight personal service. In fact, I had, when out one evening with two other attachés of the German Embassy, learned by mere accident of a desperate plot which was to be put into execution on the following day. My informant was a dancer at the Opera, who had taken too much champagne at supper. I sought audience of the Emperor early next day, and was fortunately just in time to prevent him from passing a certain spot near the Michailovski Palace, where six men were stationed with bombs of picric acid, ready to hurl. For that service His Majesty had been graciously pleased to take me into his confidence—a confidence which, I hope, I never abused. From me he was always eager to ascertain what was really happening beyond that high wall of untruth which the camarilla had so cleverly built up and preserved, and more than once had he entrusted me with certain secret missions.
I was not in uniform, as that audience was a private one; but as His Majesty, ruler of one hundred and thirty millions of people, passed me his finely-chased golden box full of cigarettes—and we both lit one, as was our habit—his brow clouded, and with a sigh he said:
“To tell the truth, Trewinnard, I am also very anxious indeed concerning the second matter—concerning the little rebel.”
“I know that Your Majesty must be,” I replied. “But, after all, Her Imperial Highness is a girl of exceptional beauty and highest spirits; and even if she indulges in—well, in a little harmless flirtation, she surely may be forgiven.”
“Other girls may be forgiven, but not those of the blood-royal,” he said in mild rebuke. “The Empress is quite as concerned about her as I am. Why, even upon this last journey of ours I found her more than once flirting with Stoyanovitch, my equerry. True, he’s a good-looking young fellow, and of excellent family, yet she ought to know that such a thing is quite unwarrantable; she ought to know that to those of the blood-royal love is, alas! forbidden.”
I was surprised at this. I had no idea that she and Ivan Stoyanovitch had become friends. He had never hinted at it.
“The fact is, Trewinnard,” the Emperor went on, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his lips, “if this continues I shall be reluctantly compelled to banish her to the Caucasus, or somewhere where she will be kept out of mischief.”
“But permit me, Sire, to query whether flirting is really mischief,” I exclaimed with a smile. “Every girl of her age—and she is hardly nineteen—fancies herself in love, mostly with men much older than herself.”
“Our women, Trewinnard, are, alas! not like women of the people,” was the Sovereign’s calm reply, his deep, earnest eyes upon mine. “It is their misfortune that they are not. They can never enjoy the same freedom as those fortunate ones of the middle-class; they seldom are permitted to marry the man they love, and though they may live in palaces and move amid the gay society of Court, yet their ideas are warped from birth, and broken hearts, alas! beat beneath their diamonds.”