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The face of his august listener was more and more in a frown. The silence continued, and now the reporter did not dare to break it. He waited. Finally, the Emperor rose and walked forward and backward across the room, deep in thought. For a moment he stopped at the window and waved paternally to the little Tsarevitch, who played in the park with the grand-duchesses.
Vassilissa, when she came back, searched for the skin, and when she could not find it her beautiful face grew sad and her bright eyes filled with tears. She said to Tsarevitch Ivan, her husband: "Oh, dear Tsarevitch, what hast thou done? There was but a short time left for me to wear the ugly frogskin. The moment was near when we could have been happy together forever. Now I must bid thee good-by.
By extraordinary laxity, though the diplomatic rupture was known, the Port Arthur squadron remained in the outer anchorage, "with all lights burning, without torpedo nets out, and without any guard vessels." Ten Japanese destroyers attacked at close quarters, fired 18 torpedoes, and put the battleship Tsarevitch and two cruisers out of action for two months.
There was no smile on his face, and his brow was clouded. "C-R-O-A-K! C-R-O-A-K! Dear husband of mine, Tsarevitch Ivan, why so sad?" gently asked the frog. "Was there anything disagreeable in the palace?" "Disagreeable indeed," answered Ivan Tsarevitch; "the Tsar, my father, wants you to bake a loaf of white bread by to-morrow." "Do not worry, Tsarevitch.
Yet the loaf was already made, and so fine it was that nobody could even describe it, for only in fairyland one finds such marvelous loaves. It was adorned all about with pretty figures, with towns and fortresses on each side, and within it was white as snow and light as a feather. The Tsar father was pleased and the Tsarevitch received his special thanks.
In a paroxysm of rage he had struck the Tsarevitch with his iron staff. He did not intend to kill him, but the blow was mortal. His death, hastened by grief, took place three years later, in 1584.
The young people leaned over his demonstration curiously and all eyes in the kiosk were intent on the matches. "You see that match," said Feodor Feodorovitch. "It is the Emperor. And this other match is the Empress; this one is the Tsarevitch; and that one is the Grand-duke Alexander; and these are the other granddukes.
"Well, when the count spoke, Nicholas huddled himself up on a settee and sobbed. 'Oh! why did God confide to me this heavy task!" "The fool!" laughed Rasputin. "To-morrow he shall see me playing with the Tsarevitch in the Park, and Nicholas shall be with us." And indeed Rasputin carried out his plan, and the count saw them together.
"Of course I shall not," remarked Rasputin, with that crafty grin of his. "She would only worry over it and just now she is greatly troubled over the Tsarevitch. He has had another attack." The monk did not mention the fact that the cause of the attack was one of Badmayev's secret drugs which Anna Vyrubova had dissolved in his milk!
I left Peterhof with Rasputin at about three o'clock that afternoon, and on our return to the Poltavskaya I spoke over the telephone, at the monk's orders, to Doctor Badmayev, the expert herbalist who prepared those secret drugs with which Madame Vyrubova regularly doped the little Tsarevitch, keeping him in a constant state of ill-health and in such a condition that he puzzled the most noted physicians in Europe.
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