It was fortunate that the winter had been a good one, and there had been no other serious relapse after that at Livadia.
Of course I knew quite well that this was only an interlude, but I noticed that Alexis Nicolaïevitch was making a real effort to control his impulsive and turbulent nature, which had unfortunately caused serious accidents, and I began to wonder whether I should not find his illness, however terrible in other ways, an ally which would gradually compel the boy to become his own master and might refine his character.
It was all a great comfort to me, but I cherished no illusions as to the difficulties of my task. I had never realised so well before how his environment fought against my efforts. I had to struggle against the servile flattery of the servants and the silly adulations of some of the people around him. It always surprised me greatly that Alexis Nicolaïevitch’s simple nature had hitherto to a large extent resisted the attraction of the extravagant praise he received.
I remember one occasion when a deputation of peasants from one of the Governments of Central Russia came to bring presents to the Czarevitch. The three men of which it was composed, on an order given by Derevenko in a low voice, dropped on their knees before Alexis Nicolaïevitch to offer him what they had brought. I noticed that the boy was embarrassed and blushed violently, and when we were alone I asked him whether he liked seeing people on their knees before him.
“Oh no, but Derevenko says it _must_ be so!”
“That’s absurd!” I replied. “Even the Czar doesn’t like people to kneel before him. Why don’t you stop Derevenko insisting on it?”
I took the matter up with Derevenko, and the boy was delighted to be freed from this irksome formality.
But a more serious element was his isolation and the circumstances under which his education was carried on. I realised that these were almost inevitable, and that the education of a prince tends to make him an incomplete being who finds himself outside life if only because he has not been subject to the common lot in his youth. Such teaching as he receives can only be artificial, tendencious, and dogmatic. It often has the absolute and uncompromising character of a catechism.