Book 3 — CHAPTER I THE DIARY OF FRÄULEIN ARNHEIM, MAID OF HONOUR (continued 2)

He stopped laughing, and with a bright smile he warmly squeezed my hand like a comrade, as if he were really thanking me for the truth.

A strange man. These Russians are as a rule strange beings. It is impossible to foretell what they will do or say next.

The more I think over it, the more it seems that there is something in them which we Europeans cannot, and never will be able to understand. To us they are the inhabitants of another planet.

February 2.

When passing along the corridor this evening, the Tsarevitch hearing my footsteps called, and asked me to come into the dining-room; he was alone, sitting before the hearth in the dusk. He made me sit down opposite to him, and began to talk to me, first in German, then in Russian; he spoke affectionately, as if we had been old friends. He told me things of considerable interest, but I will not put all down; it would be dangerous both for him and myself while I am in Russia. Here are just a few stray thoughts.

What amazed me most of all was to find that he is in no wise such a zealous partisan of all that is old, and enemy of all that is new, as he is generally believed to be.

He repeated me a Russian proverb, “Age always commends its own baldness.” Wrong is deep seated in Russia, and unless the old edifice is taken to pieces, and every log carefully scrutinized, it will be impossible to get rid of the ancient rot and decay.

The Tsar’s fault lies in his hurry.

“My father will have everything done quickly; one, two, three, and a ship is built! He won’t see that rapidity does not always mean durability. A blow, a knock, the wheel is made. Take your seat, away we go, how delightful! Suddenly a look behind—the loose spokes are all over the ground!”

February 18.

The Tsarevitch has a note book wherein he copies passages from The Chronicles of Church and State, by Baronius, which he says apply to himself, his father and others in such a way as to illustrate the difference between what used to be and what exists now. He lent me the notes to look at. They reveal a probing and liberal mind. In reference to several legends in which the miraculous is obviously exaggerated (it is true they belonged to the Roman Catholic period) I saw annotations of this kind; “Compare with the Greek.” “Doubtful.” “This is hardly true.”

But I was most interested in those notes, in which he compared historical facts and incidents of ancient Russia and foreign nations with the Russia of to-day.

A.D. 395.—“The Emperor Arcadius ordered all those who in the least degree deviated from orthodoxy to be called heretics.” (An allusion to the non-orthodoxy of the Russian Tsar.)

A.D. 455.—“The Emperor Valentinian was slain for interfering with the rights of the Church as to adultery.” (An allusion to the abolition of the Patriarchate, and the Tsar’s marriage with Catherine during the lifetime of his first wife, Eudoxia Lopoukhin.)

A.D. 514.—“Long coats were worn in France. Charles the Great ordered short coats. Praised be the long coats, shame upon the short ones.” (This was noted with reference to the present change of Russian dress.)

A.D. 814.—“A monk induced the Emperor Leo to reject the worship of ikons.” (An allusion to the monk Theodosius, the Tsar’s chaplain, who, it is said, advises the Tsar to abolish the reverence of ikons.)

A.D. 854.—“The Emperor Michael played with the Church sacraments.” (An allusion to the institution of the conclave of drunkards, the wedding of the mock Patriarch, and many other diversions of the Tsar.)

Here are a few more thoughts.

“In relation to the Papal power: Christ pronounced all His disciples equal. To say that it is impossible to be saved without the absolution of the Church is an obvious lie, for Christ said, ‘he who believes on Me shall have life everlasting,’ not on the Roman Church, which did not exist at that time. Many people were saved long before the Apostles’ preaching had even reached Rome.”

“The Mohammedan irreligion spread owing to women. Women have a liking for false prophets.” These few words, worthy of the great sceptic Beyle, reveal more about Mohammed than any of the learned researches.

Tolstoi said to me one day, with his sly foxy smile, in reference to the Tsarevitch: “The best way to gain popularity is this, in case of necessity to be able to don the skin of the stupidest of beasts.”

I did not comprehend his meaning at the time, only now am I beginning to understand.

In a work by an antique English writer—I forget his name—entitled: “The Tragedy of Hamlet the Dane,” this unhappy prince, persecuted by his enemies, pretends to be either a fool or a madman.

Is the Russian prince following Hamlet’s example? Has he not donned the hide of the simplest of the beasts?

It is rumoured that the Tsarevitch once had the courage to be candid with his father, and pleaded before him the people’s intense suffering. He has been in disgrace ever since.

February 23.

He tenderly loves his little daughter Natasha.

To-day he spent the whole of the morning sitting with her on the floor, building houses and huts out of small wooden logs. He crawled about on all fours, making believe to be a dog, a horse, a wolf. He played at ball, and when it rolled under the bed or cupboard he fetched it out again, covering himself with dust and cobwebs. He took her to his room, dandling her and showing her to everybody saying:—

“Is she not a fine girl? Where can you find another like her?”

He himself played with her like a little boy.

Natasha is clever beyond her age. When she wants to seize something forbidden and you threaten to tell her mother, she at once becomes quiet, but if you simply tell her to stop, she will begin to laugh and continue all the more. When she sees that her father is in an ill-humour she is very quiet and only gazes at him; if he turns to her she laughs loudly and waves her hands.

She fondles him like a grown up person.

I have a queer feeling when I watch her doing this. The child not only seems to love him, but also to pity him, as if she knew and saw something about him which no one else is yet aware of. It is an uncanny feeling, like that which I felt when I saw the father and mother in a dark prophetic mirror.

March 2.

“I know she loves me; she left everything for my sake,” he said once in reference to his wife.

Now that I understand the Tsarevitch better, I no longer can attach all the blame to him only for their hard life together. Both are innocent and both at fault. They are too different, too melancholy, each in their own way. Small common griefs unite, but grief great and intense divides.

They are like two persons seriously ill—wounded—lying on a bed together. They cannot help each other: and the least movement of either causes pain to both.

There are people to whom suffering has become second nature; without it they feel out of their natural element. With such persons thoughts and sentiments once having drooped will droop perpetually, like the branches of a weeping willow. Her Highness is one of these beings.

The Tsarevitch has much grief of his own, and every time he sees his wife, he sees another grief, a grief which cannot be allayed, so he pities her. But love and pity are not one and the same; he who wants to be loved must eschew pity. I know from personal experience what torture it is to pity where no help can be given; at last one begins to dread him for whom pity has so long proved in vain.

Yes, both are innocent, both are unhappy, and no one but God can help them. Poor, poor couple! I dread what all this may lead to; yet it were better if the end come soon.

March 7.

Her Highness is again with child.

May 12.

We are in Roshdestveno, the Crown Prince’s country house, seventy versts away from Petersburg, in the Koporsky district.

I have been ill for a long time. They thought I should die. The thought of dying in Russia was more terrible to me than death itself. Her Highness brought me here to Roshdestveno to give me a rest and chance of recovering my strength in the pure air.

Woods surround us; all is peaceful; nothing is heard save the rustling of leaves and the warbling of birds. The small river Oredesh hurries along like a torrent; its murmuring rises from beneath the steep slope of red clay, which is now shrouded in a transparent haze of young birch leaves, broken by the dark green of the firs.

The wooden country-house is built like the simple village huts. The principal hall, two stories high with a terem like the Moscow palaces, is not yet finished. Next to it stands a small chapel, with belfry and two bells, which the Tsarevitch delights in ringing himself. At the gates an old Swedish cannon and a small heap of iron balls which are covered with rust and overgrown with grass and yellow spring flowers. Altogether this is a real monastery—a kind of cloister in the woods.

The walls inside the houses are bare and show the beams; there is a scent of resin, with amber drops trickling like tears everywhere. Holy lamps are glimmering before the images. All is bright, fresh, clean, and innocently young.

The Tsarevitch is fond of this spot. He says he would like to live here always, and demands nothing better than to be left alone.

He reads, writes in the library, prays in the chapel, works in the garden and the orchard, fishes and roams about the forest. At this moment I see him from the window of my room. He has just been digging in the beds, planting bulbs of tulips from Haarlem; now he stands resting on the spade, as still, as if he were trying to catch some sound. Infinite stillness reigns around. Only the axe of a woodcutter is heard somewhere far, far away in the wood, and the call of the cuckoo. His face is calm and joyous. His lips are moving; he is probably humming one of his favourite prayers or hymns, the akathist of his saint, Alexis the Man of God, or the Psalm:

“I will sing unto the Lord all the days of my life. I will sing unto my God while I have my being.”

May 16.

Nowhere have I seen such evening glows as here. To-day the sunset was particularly strange; the whole of the sky bathed in blood, red clouds were scattered like rags of bloodstained garments; it seemed as though a murder or some sacrifice had been performed in the skies, and that blood was running down from heaven upon the earth. Amid the jet-black pointed needles of the firwood the patches of red clay showed like blood stains.

As I stood looking in amazement I heard a voice from somewhere above me, coming as it were from this terrible sky:

“Fräulein Juliana!”

It was the Tsarevitch who called me, standing on the dove house, in his hand a long pole, such as are used here to scare away doves. He is a great lover of doves.

I went up the shaky ladder and on reaching the platform the white doves started, like snow flakes to which the evening glow had given a roseate hue, surrounding us with the wind and rustle of their wings.

We sat down on the bench, and, little by little, drifted again, as we had repeatedly done of late, into a religious discussion.

“Your Martin Luther has allowed himself to be guided by the Spirit of the world and by his own personal predilections, not by the steadfastness of his soul. And you, poor things, have allowed yourselves to be caught by the allurement of an easy life.

“You have believed the words of your seducer and you left the narrow difficult path ordained by Christ Himself. Martin has shown himself to be an universal fool; the great poison of the serpent of hell is hid in his teaching.”

I have got used to Russian pleasantries and no longer take any notice of them; reasonable proofs avail as much in arguing with such people, as a rapier against a club. But this time I was roused, for some reason or other, and I spoke out all that for a long time I had stored up within my heart.

I began by showing that the Russians, while considering themselves superior to all Christian people, lived in reality worse than heathens; they confess the law of love, and yet practise such cruelties as are met with nowhere else in the world; they fast, and during the fast they drink like beasts; they go to church and use the most shocking expressions there; they are so ignorant that in Germany young children know more about religion than adults and priests in Russia. Hardly one out of a dozen could say the Lord’s Prayer. A pious old woman answered my question, who is the third person in the Trinity? by asserting he was St. Nicholas the wonderworker. And really this Nicholas is a true Russian God, and one might easily believe that they had none other God but he. Not in vain did the Swedish theologian Botivid in 1620, discuss the question in a thesis at the Upsala Academy, “Are the Muscovites Christians?” I know not how much more I would have said had not the Tsarevitch stopped me; he had the whole time listened with perfect calmness, it was this calm that exasperated me.

“I have meant for a long time, to ask you, Fräulein: Do you believe in the Divinity of Christ?”

“What do you mean? Does not your Highness know that all we Lutherans——”

“I do not speak generally now, I am asking you in particular. I had once a talk with your teacher Leibnitz: he shifted and shuffled, avoiding a direct answer, but, nevertheless, I at once saw that he did not truly believe in Christ. And now what about you?”

He steadily looked at me. I cast down my eyes, and for some inexplicable reason suddenly remembered all my doubts, my debates with Leibnitz, the unsolvable contradictions of metaphysics and theology.

“I think,” said I, trying also to shuffle, “that Christ was the best and wisest of the sons of men.”

“And not God’s son?”

“We are all sons of God.”

“And is He like unto the rest?”

Unwilling to lie I remained silent.

“Well, that is the point,” he said, with such an expression on his face as I had never seen before. “Your people are wise, learned, strong, honourable, famous. You have everything; but you don’t possess Christ, and you don’t need Him, you save yourselves. We, on the other hand, are stupid, poor, naked, drunk, repugnant, we are worse than barbarians, worse than beasts, and are ever on the brink of falling. But we have the Christ, our Lord with us, and with us He will remain from eternity to eternity. It is by Him, our Light, that we are saved.”

He spoke about Christ as I had noticed the common people, the moujiks, speak here, as if He were their own, one of their family, a moujik just like themselves. I know not whether this is a sign of the highest pride and blasphemous, or, one of the greatest humility and sanctity.

We both remained silent. The doves were returning to their house, and settling down thickly between us, their white fluttering wings as it were uniting us.

Her Highness sent for me. When I had come down, I turned round to have a last look at the Tsarevitch; he was feeding the doves. They had surrounded him, perched on his hands, shoulders, head. He stood there high above the black charred wood in the red bloodstained sky, covered with them, as if wrapt in white wings.

October 31, 1715.

Now that all is over I will end this diary also.

We had returned to Petersburg from Roshdestveno towards the end of May. About the middle of August—ten weeks before the time of her Highness’s delivery, she fell on the stairs and hurt her left side. They say she made a false step, because the heel of her slipper was broken, but in reality she fainted. She had seen below in the courtyard the Tsarevitch drunk, embracing and kissing his mistress, the serf-girl Afrossinia.

He had been living with her for a long time; he does it almost publicly; on his return from Karlsbad he took her into the quarter of the house which he inhabits. I did not mention this in my diary, afraid lest her Highness should read it.

Did she know? Even if she did, she tried not to know, she did not believe it till she saw it. A serf-girl is the rival of the Duchess of Wolfenbüttel—the Emperor’s sister-in-law. “Things which never happen, happen in Russia,” said a Russian to me. The father with a laundress, the son with a serf-girl!

Some say she is a Finnish woman, taken prisoner by soldiers in the same way as the Tsaritsa; others say she is a serf belonging to the tutor of the Tsarevitch—Nikiphor Viasemski; the latter statement seems more probable. She is handsome enough, yet her low origin is at once obvious. She is tall, fair-skinned, and has auburn hair, her nose is slightly turned up; her eyes are large, clear, slanting and almond shape like a Kalmuck’s, with the untamed gaze of a wild goat. She seems, on the whole, to have something goat-like about her, like the female satyr in Rubens’ picture of the Bacchanalia. It is one of those faces which revolt us women, and almost invariably please men. The Tsarevitch is supposed to be madly in love with her. It is said that when they first met she was innocent, shy, tameless, and for a long time resisted him. He did not please her at all. Neither promises nor threats would help. But once, after a drinking bout, he met her in one of those fits of madness which he, like his father, is subject to. He beat her unmercifully and nearly killed her; then threatening to stab, at last seduced her. Russian manners!

And this is the same being who looked so like a saint when in the woods of Roshdestveno, sang the akathist to Alexis the Man of God, and, surrounded by doves, spoke about the Lord Christ! For the rest, it is a special Russian gift to unite such extremes—a gift which, thank the Lord! has as yet not been revealed to us foolish foreigners.

The Tsarevitch himself once told me: “We Russians can never keep the middle path, but are always roving either on the heights or in the abysses.”

After the fall her Highness felt a pain in her left side. “I feel as if pins were pricking my body all over,” she used to say, yet, on the whole, she was calm, as if she had finally made up her mind, and knew that nothing would alter her decision. She never talked to me about the Tsarevitch again, neither did she complain of her lot. Only once she said: “I know I am irrevocably doomed. I hope my sufferings will soon end; I long for nothing in the world so eagerly as for death. Death is my sole salvation.”

On October 12th she was safely delivered of a boy, the future heir to the throne, Peter Alexeyevitch. The first days after her confinement she felt well, yet when people congratulated her, and wished her good health, she would grow angry and ask everyone to pray God to send her death. “I want to die, and die I will,” she said, with that awful, calm determination which never left her again. She obeyed neither doctors nor midwife; she seemed purposely to do everything which was forbidden her. On the fourth day she sat in an arm-chair, ordered herself to be carried into another room, and gave the child the breast herself. That same night she felt worse: fever set in, sickness, convulsions and such pains, that she cried out more than at the time of her delivery.

When the Tsar, who himself was ill at that time, knew about it, he sent Prince Ménshikoff and four court physicians, Areskin, Polikolo, and the two Blumentrosts, to hold a consultation. They found her dying, in mortis limine.

When they tried to persuade her to take medicine she tossed the glass to the ground, saying: “Don’t torment me, let me go peacefully, I don’t want to live.”

The day before her death she summoned Baron Loewenwold and communicated to him her last will: none of her people were to speak ill of the Tsarevitch, either here or in Germany; she was dying young, earlier than she expected, yet she was content with her lot and blamed none.

Then she took leave of us all. She gave me her blessing like a mother.

The Tsarevitch did not leave her. His face was terrible to look at. He fainted three times. She did not talk to him; it almost seemed that she did not recognise him. Only just before all was over, when he pressed her hand to his lips, she looked at him with a long look, and said something in a low voice. All I could hear was:—

“Soon, soon we shall see each other again!”

She died as if she had fallen asleep. The dead face expressed more happiness than it had ever shown in her lifetime.

By the Tsar’s order a post mortem examination was made, he himself being present.

The funeral was fixed for October 27th. There was a long discussion whether the rank of a Crown Princess demanded cannon to be fired at her funeral; if so, how many guns to the salute. All the foreign ambassadors were questioned on the subject. The Tsar troubled himself more about this cannonade than he had ever troubled himself about the lot of her Highness when alive. It was decided not to fire.

The coffin was borne along a narrow bridge constructed on purpose, from the house to the Neva. The Tsar and Tsarevitch walked behind the coffin. The Tsaritsa was not present—she hourly expected her delivery. A mourning frigate stood waiting on the Neva; it was draped with black, and black standards were hoisted on it. Slowly to the sounds of funeral music, the ship bore us towards the Peter and Paul Cathedral, not yet completed, where the grave of the Crown Princess had to remain under the open sky until the closing of the vaulted roof. The sky wept over her when alive; it will rain on her when dead.

The evening was dull and calm, the sky seemed like the vault of a grave; the Neva, a dark gloomy mirror. The town, wrapped in mist appeared like a phantom or nightmare. All I had experienced, seen, and heard in this dreadful city, now, more than ever, seemed to me as a dream.

From the cathedral we returned at night to the house of the Tsarevitch, for a commemoration banquet. Here the Tsar handed a letter to his son; I learnt later that he threatened to disinherit and curse him unless he reformed.

The next day the Tsaritsa was delivered of a son.

The fate of Russia wavers between those two children, the son and the grandson of the Tsar.

November 1.

I went in to the Tsarevitch last evening to talk over my departure for Germany. He sat near the lighted stove and was thrusting in burning papers, letters and manuscripts. He is probably afraid of some search.

He was holding in his hand and was just about to throw into the fire a small booklet in a well worn leather binding, when—I am even now amazed at my presumption—I inquired what it was. He handed it to me. I looked inside. It was his diary and notes. The ruling passion of women in general, and of myself in particular, is curiosity. It made me be guilty of a still greater presumption, I asked if I might borrow it to read.

He thought for a minute, then looking at me, and with his sweet child-like smile of which I am so fond:

“Quid pro quo—I read your diary, you can read mine.”

He made me promise that I would never talk to anybody about these notes and would return them to be burnt on the morrow. I have sat up the whole night with them; the booklet itself is really an old Russian calendar, a church calendar printed at Kiev. It had been given to the Tsarevitch by the late Metropolitan of Rostov, Demetrius, who is counted a saint by the people. The Tsarevitch had put down his thoughts and the events of his life partly on the margin and the blank spaces on the pages, partly on separate leaflets either simply inserted or pasted in.

I decided to make a copy of the diary.

I will not break my word, during my lifetime and his. Nobody shall know about his notes. But they must not be irrevocably lost.

God Himself will judge between father and son. But men have slandered the Tsarevitch. Let this diary, should it ever reach posterity, accuse or justify him, in any case reveal the truth.