Mr. de Giers, who was in possession of the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and who (this by the way) had always been pro-German in his sympathies, gathered sufficient courage to mention the subject to Alexander III., saying that the nation wished to see the young Grand Duke married and father of a family. The Emperor understood, and a few days later, in despatching his son to Coburg to attend the nuptials of his cousin, the Princess Victoria Mélita, with the Grand Duke of Hesse, he told him that he would like him to ask for the hand of the Princess Alix, and to offer to the latter the diadem of the Romanoffs.
The Cesarewitsch did not object this time. For one thing, he did not think his father was really ill, and he was becoming very impatient at the state of subjection in which he was being kept by his parents. He imagined that, once he was married, he would be free to live his own life; what he had seen of the Princess Alix had not given him a very high opinion of her mental capacities, and therefore he believed that she would be contented with the grandeur that was being put in her way, and would shut her eyes to any little excursions he might make outside the beaten tracks of holy matrimony. The woman he had loved had been removed from his path, and perhaps in the secret of his soul he was not so very sorry, after all, to show her that he had consoled himself. It seems also that Miss Krzesinska, the Polish dancer by whom he had had two sons, had been won over to the marriage by means about which the less said the better, and had used her influence over her lover to persuade him that the Princess Alix was of so meek and mild a temperament that they would be able to continue their relations after his marriage with her, which perhaps would not be the case were he to wed some one gifted with more independence and more intellect. Nicholas has always been of the same opinion as that of the last person with whom he spoke. He therefore yielded, went dutifully to Coburg, and just as dutifully proposed to the young Princess whose arrival in Russia was to herald so much misfortune to her new family, as well as to her new country.
The engagement was announced on the 20th of April, 1894, but was not made in Russia the subject of welcome it had been expected. Everybody felt that love had played no part in this union, which politics alone had inspired. The open repugnance which the bride displayed for everything that was Russian, and the hesitation she had shown before consenting to adopt the orthodox faith, had not predisposed in her favor St. Petersburg society. The Empress Marie, whose consent had been a matter of necessity, did not hide the want of sympathy with which this marriage inspired her; the Imperial Family did not care to see put over its head the insignificant Princess it had snubbed two years before; the nation, violently anti-German as it had become, wondered why it had not been possible to find for its future Sovereign a wife in some other country than the one which seemed to consider as its right the privilege of furnishing Russia with its Empresses.