The Palace and Tombs of the Czars [pp. 125-131]

1872.] THE PALA CE AND TOMBS OF THE CZARS.
tions would cost him no trouble or annoyance.
In a little room used by the Empress, there was a bower covered with
creeping plants, and fitted inside like a
garden summer-house. Here she sits
during the long nights of winter, when
public occasions do not require her presence, and gathers her children and grandchildren about her to work, or gossip, or
drink tea. It is a fairy-like spot, where,
hidden in green leaves, and breathing
sweet odors, they all forget the dullness
of more splendid pleasures. Luxuries
like this are common among the more
wealthy Russians. In many of the palatial mansions, ivy is trained on trellises so as to form beautiful screens.
Wandering on, a door was opened
upon a tasteful garden. There were
shrubs, parterres, flower-beds, edges of
box, winding walks, and artificial rocks.
The windows were thrown back, and the
sparrows, who were evidently familiar
with the retreat, flew out, upon our intrusion, with great alarm. This retreat,
with its flowers, walks of gravel, fountains, arbors, exotic plants, and all, is inside-a room, in fact, of the CzarskoCelo. No wonder that the members of
the imperial household, in pulling nosegays and feasting their eyes on flowers,
are in danger of forgetting, in midwinter, the wild storm which pelts the poor
zmoujiks outside!
Within the palace there is also another and larger garden, open to the sky.
It is made over the stables, and has
earth enough to rear grape-vines and
large trees. Its measurement is forgotten, but it is capacious, full of broad and
pleasant walks, where lovers might stunter and children play, and is admirably
kept. In entering this garden from one
of the grand apartments, it is scarcely
possible to believe that all is artificial
under foot, and that hundreds of horses
are stabled below. This garden is intended to be a lounge for the Court gen
erally, the smaller one, before described,
being private.
The apartments in the palace once
occupied by Prince Nicholas, the late
Czarewich, who died in I865, at the age
of twenty-one, are not shown. The
guide stated that the Empress, when at
Czarsko-Celo, spent a part of every day
in performing her religious devotions
within this suite of rooms; that she permits no servant to arrange them except
under her own personal supervision;
and that many vases of fresh flowers
stand upon the brackets and mantelpieces-flowers arranged by her own
hands, every morning and evening.
Alexander, the present heir-apparent,
with his beautiful wife, Princess Maria
Sophie, and their children, occupy a
section considerably removed from the
apartments of the Empress. They are
fitted up with great taste and appropriateness, but among them all the nursery
for the children was most interesting.
It was a lofty, large, and handsome
room, with little furniture, but containing a good supply of toys. There were
carts, hobby-horses, sentry-boxes, sledges, wheelbarrows, and soldiers; there
were also dolls, furniture, cradles, wardrobes, china, bowls and ewers, knives
and forks -all of playthings' size and
quality. It seemed pleasant in a palace,
where selfishness and coldness are supposed to be at home, to find that the
good-natured Czarewich and his womanly and wise wife had one sacred spot,
wholly their own, in which holy feelings
were nurtured and grew, and where these
inheritors of greatness can forget, for a
season, the artificial existence by which
they are surrounded.
The room appropriated to the Crown
Prince and the Grand Duke Alexis, and
in which they grew up from boyhood to
manhood, is shown to strangers. It is
large, is fitted as a study, and contains
every thing which a Russian —or any
other- prince could require, and some
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