If the truth be told, poor Michael had never been her enemy, however much he may have disapproved of some of her actions. The only thing he asked was to be left alone with the wife whom he had chosen and married against the opposition of the whole world and of his entire family, beginning with his mother. She was a lady by birth, the wife of one of his brother officers in a Cuirassier regiment quartered at Gatchina. The Grand Duke had become attracted by her principally on account of her sympathetic appearance and the patience with which she had listened to the tale of his affection for one of his sister Olga’s maids of honour with whom he had been passionately in love and whom he had wished to marry. The romance was quickly nipped in the bud by the interference of the Dowager Empress and the young lady packed away abroad with strict injunctions not to return to Russia until further notice. The Grand Duke had been very unhappy, but had submitted, and poured the story of his wrongs into the ears of Madame Wulfert. The latter was a charming woman, but she had had a first husband, from whom she had been divorced before marrying her present one. This alone would have made her undesirable as a wife for the only brother of the Czar, and when her union with Captain Wulfert was also dissolved, thanks to the relations which had established themselves between her and the young Grand Duke, this undesirableness was still further accentuated. But she had given birth to a son, and was moreover a person of considerable attraction and of unusual cleverness. Michael found out that he could not live without her, and married her in Vienna, without asking any one’s permission to do so, thereby bringing upon his head the wrath of all his relatives.