It was mid-winter when I arrived for the first time in Petersburg, magical beneath its snow mantle, and I came as a simple tourist to see the country and to study the conditions of Russian life. I established myself in a hotel as a Spanish countess, feeling delighted that nobody knew who I actually was, and revelling in the freedom of strict incognito. But I had not been in the hotel five hours before a Grand Master of Ceremonies arrived and betrayed my secret. From that minute everybody knew that the countess was an Infanta of Spain, and my liberty was gone. It is my usual experience. I arrive somewhere, believing that not a soul knows where I am, and, almost before I have taken possession of my rooms, there is a whirr of the telephone bell and somebody at the other end saying: “Eulalia, how did you get here? You must come and see us at once.” The Grand Master of Ceremonies brought me a message from the Emperor and Empress, telling me how delighted they were to know that they were going to see me soon, and suggesting that I should come to the Winter Palace the next morning for the Twelfth Day ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters. “But I have nothing to wear!” I cried. It was absolutely true. I had never expected to figure at a Court ceremony, and it had not occurred to me to bring a _manteau de cour_. Etiquette, however, is less severe in Russia than in Spain or in Prussia, as I soon discovered, and the next morning I put on my smartest frock and drove to the Winter Palace, a gigantic building, painted dull red, with rows of gods and goddesses standing on the cornice of its stupendous façade, looking cold and unhappy in the nipping air. I had not seen the Empress since we were girls, staying with Queen Victoria at Windsor or in the beautiful Isle of Wight. And what a charming girl she was! A simple English girl in appearance, in a skirt and blouse, utterly unaffected, warm-hearted, and fresh as a rosebud touched with dew. I was thinking of the happy, careless days when we were in England together, as I drove to the palace, forgetting the change that the passage of the years makes in the friends of one’s youth, and when I went into the room where the Empress was waiting to watch the Blessing of the Waters from the window, I felt startled to find, instead of the girl I used to know, a surpassingly beautiful and stately woman. The petals of the rosebud had unfolded. She was the centre of a brilliant group of Grand Duchesses and ladies, all wearing the strange but beautiful dress of the Russian Court, with long hanging sleeves. On her head was a _kokoshnik_, a crescent-shaped diadem, flaming with diamonds, from which fell a long white veil, and her stateliness and beauty distinguished her from all the other sumptuous figures surrounding her. A stranger who had never seen her before would have been certain that it was she, and not one of the others, who was Empress.