of fact the only loyal supporters I ever had around
me were my wife and family besides a few others in
the service of the State. When I announced my
war aims on the Pacific for the benefit of my people
my leading Minister had the audacity to obtrude upon
my privacy at Tsarskoye Selo and demand that I withdraw
the manifesto. This piece of impudence cost me
the decision in that war. That magniloquent Minister,
with his versatile Irish amanuensis, not only turned
my mother against me, but he had the temerity to demand
that I dismiss my best agent, Azeff, who alone kept
me advised of the machinations of the Social Revolutionists,
who, in turn, accused me of murdering my uncle Sergius—the
greatest theologian of the age. As I recall the
time, now, I am, of course, convinced that the only
real friend I had among those Social Revolutionists
was BURTZEV,—but I understood him too late!’...
My prisoner spoke regretfully. His voice was
soft and courteous, breaking at times into the altisonance
of the tragic muse. He does not think that any
act of his can be wrong; the mere fact that HE ran
counter to accepted standards divests, in his mind,
the act itself of turpitude. That seems to be
the way he looked upon his former Eastern encrouchments.
That’s the way he justified his subterranean
deals with the KAISER; and he even goes so far as
to assert that ’if the Vyborg-Bjoerkesund
treaty had not been denounced the present war would
not have happened.’ He speaks of this
a little passionately, scorning the very memory of
Count Witte for ‘questioning the morality of
that arrangement.’ That great Minister
my prisoner refers to as ’an uncouth bully
who bellowed like a mad bull.’ In this
respect it is my impression that the ex-Empress indorses
his state of mind. What he likes she will place
in the superlative; what he merely hates, she
elevates to positive abhorrence. In this way
she seems to flatter his decisions, which makes him
smile quite indulgently at her, and hold her ascendency
over his apparently veering mind. I can notice
this in so many little things: She oozes delicate
flattery and he likes it; she plays upon his prejudices,
and he seems to have a lot of them submerged beneath
his inalienable urbanity and instinctive grace of
manner that even this misery and abysmal gloom have
not relieved of polish. Beneath it all I get
the impression that he is very much in love with every
member of his family.... that he would like to be
alone with ‘Alice,’ whom he addresses
as ‘my darling’ and experiences a shell-shock
if she stubs her toe. His final words are:
’Now it is ALL OVER and I WILL WELCOME THE OBLIVION
that will release us all from the memory of our devoted
bondage!’... While my prisoner conversed
Alexis assisted his stately mother and his four beautiful
sisters while putting on their superannuated wraps....
One by one they filed out the door leading into the
open yard.... My prisoner stood up and stretched