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1912] THE EMPRESS AND RASPUTIN 73
conversations with cultivated friends, scholars, poets,
and artists ; receptions, rather informal than otherwise,
but composed of the real elite of a society in which
intelligent elements have never been lacking; political
discussions with the men of yesterday and of to-morrow,
who would be flattered at being admitted into this
sanctuary of refinement and elegance. This dwelling, I
thought to myself, shelters a sovereign, powerful, but
prone to good-nature and simplicity, gifted with a quick
and inquiring mind made for the interchange of
impressions and opinions ; four young girls, whose beauty and
charm will gradually be revealed to a
respectfully-admiring world, like the blooming of rare and lovely
flowers in our hot-houses ; an adored son, just weak and
sickly enough to bring a shade of melancholy into the
beautiful eyes of his mother. . . . And this mother, this
wife, this Empress, moving in this beautiful setting, with
all these sources of joy and happiness, leaves the
beautiful white palace, with its pictures, its sculpture, and its
beautiful books, the flowers which perfume it and the
delightful children who fill it with life; she leaves all
this with the eager joy of a convalescent going out for
the first time into the fresh air, and she goes to shut
herself up for hours in a wretched room in a
commonplace apartment with a dirty and knavish moujik,
seeking from this creature—so immeasurably beneath her—
spiritual consolation, foretelling of the future, guidance
for a timid conscience and a sick mind. . . . And then
she returns to this Tsarskoe palace, in which she has
succeeded in "sequestering" her husband, to this palace
whence nothing radiates to the adjacent capital and to
the country: neither noble refinement, nor mental
shrewdness, nor even political guidance—nothing save
an absurd and ridiculous legend—grieved over by the
friend and retailed triumphantly by the foe, and which
goes on growing and circulating till it becomes one of
the chief causes of a downfall and a catastrophe almost
unequalled in history !
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