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The Tsar’s virtues as a private man are readily
recognized. For the first time for centuries, for the first time
probably at all, he furnishes an example of an occupant
of the throne of Russia, about whose relations to the
other sex even evil tongues have not the slightest thing
to report. The men, as well as the women, who have
occupied it, have for all time been renowned for their
erotic extravagances. The emperor seems to be a
pattern as a husband and a father. About this exemplary
imperial family, the Russian court nevertheless runs
riot with its elegant frivolity and its numberless
irregularities, without re-acting upon it, but also without being
influenced by the spirit which emanates from it. All
the world knows that the Prince Imperial Alexis lives
openly with the beautiful Countess de Beauharnais,
sister of General Skobelef, whose husband, a cousin of
the Prince Imperial, the Prince of Leuchtenberg, has
seen his profit in resigning his rights to a prince of the
imperial family. The beautiful German Princess Maria
Pávlovna, consort of Prince Imperial Vladimir, of whom
the author of the book La Société de St. Petersbourg,
instigated by his hatred to the Germans, relates all
imaginable evil, is, as it were, an incarnation of the
passion for court pleasures. It is not necessary to
believe what is said of her by the pen inspired by hate;
but this much is true, that there is a sort of recklessness
which stamps the tendency she gives to the amusements
of the court. She arranges parties in which they amuse
themselves with all kinds of games, but chiefly with
playing hide-and-seek (cache-cache). In such games now
and then a lady of the highest rank will be found
hidden away with an officer of the guards in an empty
bath-tub. One of the amusements of the youth in these
court circles, also, is to get up sleighing parties, in which
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