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And he has no son! Who would be his heir? There would be only trouble. . . .
"Since Baron Wrangel died, his army is now the Grand Duke Nicholas' army, but what is it? Scattered! A few thousand men scattered in Bulgaria and Serbia—they call it now Jugoslavia. A phantom army!"
Rasputin. When a guest broached to the Grand Duke Alexander the subject of the notorious "Black Monk" called Rasputin, or the "Debauchee," he recoiled with a slight gesture of disgust. Since His Imperial Highness' wife is a sister-in-law of the assassinated Tsaritsa Alexandra, who was the chief patroness of Rasputin, no subject would well have been more delicate. When it was made clear however that the questioner did not share the commonly received opinion of Rasputin, but thought him in some respects admirable, the Grand Duke Alexander perceptibly brightened and said: "He was a great hypnotist—very strong! And he was a great healer. Two, three or four times he saved the life of the Tsarevitch—the little son Alexis. So his mother, my sister-in-law, the Tsaritsa ordered Rasputin to come often to attend the Tsarevitch.
"They called him a monk but he was no holy man. He was a peasant—so rough and dirty—and so he was spoiled. He wanted all he could get, and so there was much intrigue. But what were called his 'orgies' were always far away from the Imperial Family. . . ."
Comfortable Romanovs. Asked how many of the Imperial Family are safely out of Russia and in comfortable circumstances, the Grand Duke Alexander exclaimed: "Comfortable! We are none of us comfortable! But I understand you-perhaps there are 30 of us who are what you call 'in comfortable circumstances.' There is my wife and I have six children.* Perhaps there are a few more than 30 of the Imperial Family who have enough to buy the few things we want. I write books, and now I lecture. I teach not a religion but Spirituality that is in all religions. Every one! But especially in the Russian—the Greek Orthodox Church—that is so flexible, so broad that every Russian can understand."
Nicholas & Cyril. Though the Grand Duke Alexander's words of last week were significant and prompt to the minute, His Imperial Highness naturally did not attempt to sketch the full background of the feuds between Nicholas and Cyril, which Death seemed about to end last week.
While the right of consanguinity is all on the side of Grand Duke Cyril, he has lost the allegiance of thousands of Russian emigres who are satisfied: 1) that Cyril intrigued with revolutionaries against Nicholas II, and was well content when the Tsar was sent to Siberia (where he was later assassinated); 2) that as the revolution assumed an uglier phase Cyril was the only one of the Grand Dukes to proclaim himself "republican," and thus managed to remain snug in his palace at Petrograd, long after other Romanovs were exiled and many murdered; 3) that the Grand Duke Cyril actually renounced his imperial prerogatives, in a panic, and called himself "Citizen Cyril Romanov"; 4) that in any case Nicholas II detested the Grand Duke Cyril and suspended all his honors, for some years, after he married a divorcee Grand Duchess, contrary to the wishes and strict code of Nicholas the Last.