After the picturesque ceremony which had stirred these thoughts had ended and the Archbishop had dipped a golden cross in the water running below the ice of the river, the holy water was brought into the palace to the Empress, and the Emperor joined us. He gave me a characteristically Russian welcome. His manner was engagingly simple and unaffected. The contrast between him and the German Emperor was extraordinary. The Kaiser, a constitutional monarch, whose power is strictly limited, shows by his bearing and his manner, as I have indicated in another chapter, that he holds the divine right of kings to be a cardinal article of faith. When one is with the Tsar it requires a certain effort of the imagination to remember that he possesses autocratic power over the lives of 160,000,000 human beings. The Russians are the most hospitable people in the world, and the Emperor and Empress are not excelled by any of their subjects in kindness and generosity to guests. They both insisted that, so long as I remained in Petersburg, I must be with them as much as possible, and, in point of fact, although I slept at the hotel, I was constantly at the Winter Palace, and had my part in the intimate family life of the Imperial family.
When a man likes nothing better than to remain at home with his wife, it is a sure sign that he is very much in love with her. Judged by that test, there is no happier couple in Europe than the Emperor and Empress of Russia. They are never more contented than when together, and it was obvious to me that the Tsar simply adores his wife. It would be strange if he did not, for there is not a gentler or sweeter woman in the world than the beautiful Tsaritsa. And both of them are devoted to their children. They used to make me come with them sometimes to the nursery, where the little Grand Duchesses used to welcome us with shrieks of delight. What games there were! People who think of the Tsar as a frowning despot would have been astonished to see a vigorous pillow-fight going on between him and his children. And away from the formalities of the Court, closeted with her children, the Tsaritsa was always radiant and happy. Under the spell of their prattle and of their caresses she was transformed. The smiling mother seemed a different woman to the beautiful but grave lady seen by the public in the ceremonies of the Court.