Confessions of the CzarinaRadziwill, Catherine, Princess
History
Confessions of the Czarina
Radziwill, Catherine, Princess
Alexandra, Empress, consort of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1872-1918; Russia -- Court and courtiers
The foolish woman believed absolutely all the nonsense which was being
constantly poured into her ears. Her ambition and lust for revenge over
her enemies also played a part in this whole tragedy. She therefore
began wondering whether, after all, she ought not to follow the advice
which she had received from Heaven, as she fondly imagined, through the
mouth of Raspoutine. She would have liked to be able to consult once
again the spirit of Colonel Orloff so as to relieve her perplexity,
because she had still sufficient scruples to hesitate before allowing
those whom she considered to be her friends to use her name for the
execution of a Palace revolution directed against her own husband, whom
she may not have loved, but whom she still respected as the Czar of All
the Russias.
It is at this juncture that a new incident occurred, the real details of
which have never yet transpired. Raspoutine, just before he had been
murdered, had introduced to the Empress a Tibetan doctor with whom he
was on terms of intimate friendship, telling her that he was a man of
great ability, devoted to occult sciences, had studied them in the
convents of his country, and who was quite able to perform miracles.
This man, whose name was Badmaieff, certainly saw Alexandra Feodorowna
several times, and it was reported that he gave her certain drugs which
he told her she ought to administer to the Emperor in secret, drugs
which would make him quite subservient to her will. Whether she used
them or not it is impossible to say. Young Prince Youssoupoff declared
immediately after the Revolution that she had done so, and that in
consequence of this experiment Nicholas II.’s will, which had always
been a weak one, had completely disappeared, until he had been reduced
to the condition of a puppet in the strong hands of his wife. But this
assertion, coming as it did from a personage who could not have nursed
kind feelings in regard to the Empress, must be accepted with caution.
It is a fact, however, that those in attendance on the Sovereign
remarked more than once that he seemed at times to have lost the real
consciousness of what was going on around him, that his eyes had
acquired a vague, dazed look they had never worn before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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