- Project Runeberg -  Diplomatic Reminiscences before and during the World War, 1911-1917 /
508

(1920) [MARC] Author: Anatolij Nekljudov - Tema: Russia, War
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5o4

IN SPAIN AND IN EXILE [chap. xxv.

in his prison at SchlQsselburg1 ... all these pictures,
familiar to me from my infancy, and so many more besides,
were conjured up before my mental vision, ever forming
that tragic and bitter contrast between supreme pomp
and supreme misery, of the innocent paying the debt of
blood of the guilty; a state of things so terribly
overwhelming and cruel, unless one accepts, in deep humility,
the idea of a single Will who rules worlds as He rules
each of us, and who at the appointed hour endues us
with His Spirit and His Strength to endure all, to
understand all.

The very next day I sent off a private and confidential
letter to Prince Lvoff, thus discharging the commission
entrusted to me by the King. I never received any
answer. Soon after my letter reached Petrograd,
Prince Lvoff disappeared discreetly from the scene, as
the Duma had disappeared, as Rodzianko and the
other "high commissioners" had disappeared, leaving
the whole quasi-dictatorial power to Kerensky—■
President of the Council, then Commander-in-Chief,
then President of the Republic which he had proclaimed
unaided, but first and foremost the plaything of the
omnipotent Soviets !

1 Great-grandson of the Tsar John V. (the weak-minded brother and
co-regent of Peter the Great), John VI. Antonovitch came to the throne
at the age of six months, in succession to his great-aunt the cruel and
cynical Anne Joannovna. A few months later he was dethroned by
Elisabeth Petrovna, torn from his family and confined in the strictest
seclusion. Having reached the age of twenty-three, without ever having
seen anything but his gloomy prison -walls, without ever experiencing in
his infancy the endearments or the care of a woman, he was killed by his
gaolers just when a young adventurer was striving to free him in order
to proclaim him Emperor (1764). A sadder story has rarely been
recorded in history !

Those who are inclined to believe in Divine vengeance extending
—according to the Jews—down to the seventh generation, might extract
an argument in support of their thesis from the fact that the Emperor
Nicolas II. represented the seventh generation starting from the Empress
Elisabeth Petrovna, and the little Tsarevitch Alexis the seventh generation
starting from Catherine II., in the second year of whose reign the
unfortunate John Antonovitch perished in such a ghastly manner.

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