One Year at the Russian Court: 1904-1905

Five or six years ago some Russian cousins of mine came for a short stay to Paris, and for the first time they pronounced before me the name of “Rasputin,” telling me of his dis...

Monsieur Radzianko, as is known, was elected President of the third Duma, and again of the fourth, that is to say, he was President at the moment of the Revolution. He married a...

Life at Michaelovka was very gay and delightful, in that beautiful palace belonging to Grand Duke Michael-Michaelovitch on the shore of the Baltic, and surrounded by every possi...

The Empress lived in constant dread of some misfortune befalling the Emperor or the Tzarevitch, and had to endure the most cruel tortures in consequence. Not a day passed withou...

I met in society many who were much imbued with the idea of a constitution, and even of a Republic, a word which sounded like magic to them--magic, like something far off. They...

Russians are very superstitious: for instance, they would never tell you that you are looking well, without tapping wood several times with the forefinger for fear that what the...

On the 6th January 1905--Old Style--I made my entry into the most brilliant and exclusive society of Petrograd, and the occasion was for the annual blessing of the Neva on the f...

The ceremony took place at La Laure, which is the ecclesiastical quarter of Petrograd and is an enormous monastery surrounded by walls and ditches full of water, a kind of forti...

Tiflis is a town of 100,000 inhabitants, built, as it were, at the bottom of a basin, surrounded by high mountains which in former days were wooded, now, however, absolutely bar...

While I was at Michaelovka the Revolution was gaining ground every day. Russia was going through a critical period of her history and one felt as though one was living on a volc...

The following autumn proved a veritable time of enchantment for me. I spent it in the Caucasus, at Tiflis, with my good and kind aunt, Princess Cherwachidze, who owns a beautifu...

Great preparations now began for the baptism of the Tzarevitch. I shall never forget with what joy we heard the appointed number of guns fired announcing the glad tidings that a...

The French Embassy welcomed me in the most charming way, and I retain the best remembrances of the moments spent in its _salons_. The Russians considered the Bompards bourgeois...

The Court spent the summer at the Palace of Peterhof. My aunt, Princess Cherwachidze, always rented a villa there on leaving her house at Petrograd. Most of the Grand Dukes had...

On her return to Petrograd for the winter, my Aunt Cherwachidze took up again her charitable rôle of confidante to her protégés, who overwhelmed her with visits, disputed for he...

At last, I was on the eve of my departure for Russia! The dream of my twenty summers! For that great Russia, the country of my devoted grandmother, Baroness de Nicolay, who, how...

The country from Petrograd to Viborg is for the most part like one perpetual garden, the train passes between what is literally a long series of villas and gardens in the midst...

At that time motors were very rarely seen in Russia, the reason for this being, I suppose, that there were so few good roads; and when one did appear in the streets it immediate...