- Project Runeberg -  Diplomatic Reminiscences before and during the World War, 1911-1917 /
401

(1920) [MARC] Author: Anatolij Nekljudov - Tema: Russia, War
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i9i6] THE GRAND-DUKE PAUL

401

always shown me, to his universal kindness, to his ardent
patriotism and to the undeniable nobility and sincerity
of his personal and private character.

When he was hurled from the pinnacle of greatness,
most of those who had served him, fawned on him,
flattered him, turned against him and no longer
remembered either what they had obtained through his
generosity—or his weakness, or the devotion they had
heretofore professed to the person of the Monarch.
They now only spoke of the "country"; the country
must be saved at all costs, and it was in the name of this
sentiment—probably—that they abjured their former
convictions and overthrew their former idols.
Nevertheless, in saving the country, they intended also to save
their interests, their position, their emoluments, and
it is that side of the case which has always appeared to
me to be the weak point in all the fine speeches that I
heard, from the outset of the Russian Revolution, from
the lips of my friends, men of the world, men in office,
who from one day to another had become the staunch
partisans of the new regime and the assiduous clients of
the new men, the dispensers of the sportula.

The next day I returned to Tsarskoe-Selo to present
myself to the Empress Alexandra.

I began by lunching with the Grand-Duke Paul and
Princess Pale! in their fine palace which had recently
been built. I found myself again in the congenial
atmosphere of the informal receptions of the
Grand-Duke and his wife in Paris at their charming house in
the " Pare des Princes." In their Tsarskoe palace—
built and decorated by French experts in the same
Louis XVI. style, but larger and grander—there were
gathered together on that fine winter’s morning the
same people I had seen so often in Paris : the worthy
Grand-Duke, so good, so simple and yet so refined;
the beautiful and charming Countess of Hohenfelsen
(re-named Princess Palei’ since the war through horror
of all Boche names); their two daughters, born while I

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