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39°
39° A VISIT TO PETROGRAD [chap. xxi.
me; it may well have been that I was prejudiced against
my august hostess ; but it seemed to me that she wished
to show me to what extent she shared the worries of
the Government and of the High Command, and to
make me understand that when one came to Petrograd
on business connected with one’s official duties, one
ought to discuss this business with the Empress. The
co-regency had begun.
Two days later I called on the Dowager Empress.
Her Majesty discussed with me the unprecedented
sufferings inflicted by Germany on our prisoners of war ;
she mentioned the insults to which she had been
subjected in Berlin when she passed through Germany
the day before the declaration of war, on her way from
the Belgian frontier to Copenhagen. The dear good
Empress did not conceal the feeling of profound disgust
inspired in her by German cruelty and the duplicity of
William II.; the terms she used were as frank as they
were cutting.
I also went to see the Grand - Duke Nicolas
Mikhailovitch, whom I had often met during my last
years in Paris and in Petrograd. The enemies of this
man, who was both clever and cultivated, liked to
compare him to Philippe Egalite, and asserted that he
intrigued with the "Masonic" party against his august
cousin, the Emperor Nicolas II. Nothing was ever
less true. A very sincere Liberal, the Grand-Duke did
not restrain his criticisms of a regime that he considered
disastrous, as much for the country as for the combined
interests of the Emperor and the Imperial Family; he
did so with an openness that precluded all idea of
intrigue; the most that could be said of him was that
he had the characteristics of the perpetual fault-finder.
Carefully excluded from politics and the government of
the Empire, he had taken refuge in the sphere of
historical research. The studies and works which he
wrote himself, and which were brought out in sumptuous
editions to which one was not accustomed in Russia,
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