Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [19]
He gave her a ruby ring and that brooch—the brooch he had given her at the children’s ball long ago. She wore his ring around her neck, along with her cross, and the brooch was always with her.
From her letter on the twenty-first anniversary of their engagement:
“April 8th, 1915. Tenderly do my prayers & grateful thoughts full of very deepest love linger around you on this dear anniversary!… You know I have kept the grey princesse dress I wore that morning. And shall wear yr. dear brooch.”
On their twenty-second anniversary:
“April 8th, 1916.… feel my longing to be held in your arms tightly clasped & to relive our beautiful bridal days.… That dear brooch will be worn today. I feel still your grey suite, the smell of it by the window in the Coburg Schloss.”
A twelve-carat diamond would be found in the filthy campfire where their clothing was burned that morning of July 17, 1918. The remains of the brooch. It was with her until the end.
How happy he was then! She too tried to be happy. Nonetheless, she continued to cry even afterward. The people around them could not understand it. Observing her tears, a simple-hearted lady-in-waiting wrote in her diary exactly what she could have been expected to write: Alix did not love her future spouse. She herself did not understand her tears—after all, she loved him very much, as she would recall in her letter on the twenty-second anniversary of their engagement: “those sweet kisses wh. I had dreamed of & yearned after so many years & wh. I thought, I should never get … & when make up for sure mind, then it is already for always—the same in my love and affections. A far too big heart wh. eats me up.”
He, however—he was deliriously happy. All his life he would gaily recall the orchestra playing at Coburg Castle and his Uncle Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, worn out from dinner, dozing off during the wedding ceremony and dropping his cane. What faith he had in the future then! And all those uncles and aunts (queens, an emperor, princes, dukes), who were still deciding the fates of nations, crowding in the halls of Coburg Castle and also believing in the future. If only they could have looked into the future then.
The newlyweds Ernie and Ducky, the “fine couple,” would separate soon afterward, and Alix’s sister Ella would perish at the bottom of a mine shaft. Uncle Willy, who was so fond of his military uniforms and was looking forward to a military alliance with Russia, instead would start a war with Russia. Uncle Paul, who was now dancing the mazurka, would be lying with a bullet in his heart, and Nicky himself….
“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.”
On April 9, Alexander Volkov was sent by his master, Grand Duke Paul, to deliver a present on the occasion of the engagement. He found Nicholas and Alix in the drawing room, sitting on the sofa, holding hands. So swallowed up were they in each other that Nicholas did not notice Volkov right away.
“Oh, it’s you, dear friend Volkov!”
Volkov, too, was “dear.” Everyone was “dear” (Nicholas’s favorite word).
At that time Ekaterina Adolfovna Schneider was already tutoring Alix in Russian. They were conjugating verbs, and Alix was recording them neatly in notebooks. She liked to study.
I am leafing through her study notebooks. Alix learned the language by conjugating three verbs: forget, sing, and believe. The unconscious: forget! Forget all her inexplicable