Nikanór Ivánovich is a great trial to me. I cannot overcome my antipathy and aversion for him. ‘O Lord, grant me to see my own iniquities and not to judge my brother-man.’ But I see all his faults, discern them with the penetration of malignity, see all his weaknesses, and cannot conquer my antipathy for him – my brother-man, who like myself proceeds from God.
What do such feelings mean? I have experienced them more than once in my long life. My two strongest aversions were for Louis XVIII, with his big stomach, hooked nose, repulsive white hands, and his self-confidence, insolence, and obtuseness – there, I cannot keep from abusing him – and the other antipathy is for this Nikanór Ivánovich who tormented me for two hours yesterday. Everything about him, from the sound of his voice to his hair and his nails, evokes repulsion in me, and to explain my gloominess to Márya Martemyánovna I told her a lie, saying that I was not well. After they had gone I prayed, and after the prayer I grew calm. I thank Thee, O Lord, that the one and only thing I need is in my own power. I remembered that Nikanór Ivánovich had been an infant and that he would die. I recalled the same with reference to Louis XVIII, knowing him to be already dead, and I regretted that Nikanór Ivánovich was no longer here that I might express my goodwill to him.
Márya Martemyánovna brought me some candles so that I can write in the evenings. I went out. To the left the bright stars have disappeared in a wonderful aurora borealis. How beautiful, how beautiful! But now I will continue.
My father and mother had gone abroad, and I and my brother Constantine, born two years after me, were in our grandmother’s complete control for the whole of their absence. My brother had been named Constantine to denote that he was to become Emperor of Constantinople.
Children love everybody and especially those who love and caress them. My grandmother caressed and praised me, and I loved her in spite of the smell, repulsive to me, which always hung about her, notwithstanding her perfumes, and was especially noticeable when she took me on her lap. Her hands too were unpleasant to me – clean, yellowish, shrivelled, slippery, and shiny, with fingers bent inwards and with long nails from which the skin had been pushed back unnaturally far. Her eyes were dull, weary, almost lifeless, and this together with her smiling, toothless mouth, created a painful though not exactly repulsive impression. I attributed that expression of her eyes – which I now remember with loathing – to her exertions on behalf of her people, as it was explained to me, and I pitied her for that languid expression. Once or twice I saw Potëmkin19 – a one-eyed, squinting, enormous, dark, perspiring, and dirty man who was terrible. He seemed to me particularly terrible because he alone was not afraid of grandmother, but spoke loud in her presence in his bellowing voice, and boldly caressed and teased me, though addressing me as ‘your Highness’.
Among those I saw with her in my early childhood was Lanskóy.20 He was always with her and everybody noticed him and paid court to him. My grandmother especially looked at him continually. Of course I did not then understand what it meant, and Lanskóy pleased me very much. I liked his curls, his handsome thighs in tightly stretched elk-skin breeches, his well-shaped calves, his merry careless smile, and the diamonds that glittered all over him.
It was a very merry time. We were taken to Tsárskoe Seló, where we boated, dug in the garden, went for walks, and rode on horseback. Constantine, plump, red-haired,
