Yet, sure though I was of the soundness of my view, the moment the parents’ consent was obtained my fears were greater than ever. I seemed to have a presentiment of what was to come....
Everything went well at first, and I was beginning to be easy in my mind, when the accident I had so much feared happened without a word of warning. The Czarevitch was in the schoolroom standing on a chair, when he slipped, and in falling hit his right knee against the corner of some piece of furniture. The next day he could not walk. On the day after the subcutaneous hæmorrhage had progressed, and the swelling which had formed below the knee rapidly spread down the leg. The skin, which was greatly distended, had hardened under the force of the extravasated blood, which pressed on the nerves of the leg and thus caused shooting pains, which grew worse every hour.
I was thunderstruck. Yet neither the Czar nor the Czarina blamed me in the slightest. So far from it, they seemed to be intent on preventing me from despairing of a task my pupil’s malady made so perilous. As if they wished by their example to make me face the inevitable ordeal, and enlist me as an ally in the struggle they had carried on so long, they associated me in their anxieties with a truly touching kindness.
The Czarina was at her son’s side from the first onset of the attack. She watched over him, surrounding him with her tender love and care and trying by a thousand attentions to alleviate his sufferings. The Czar came the moment he was free. He tried to comfort and amuse the boy, but the pain was stronger than his mother’s caresses or his father’s stories, and the moans and tears began once more. Every now and then the door opened and one of the Grand-Duchesses came in on tip-toe and kissed her little brother, bringing a gust of sweetness and health into the room. For a moment the boy would open his great eyes, round which the malady had already painted black rings, and then almost immediately close them again.
One morning I found the mother at her son’s bedside. He had had a very bad night. Dr. Derevenko was anxious, as the hæmorrhage had not been stopped and his temperature was rising. The inflammation had spread further and the pain was even worse than the day before. The Czarevitch lay in bed groaning piteously. His head rested on his mother’s arm, and his small, deathly-white face was unrecognisable. At times the groans ceased and he murmured the one word “Mummy!” in which he expressed all his sufferings and distress. His mother kissed him on the hair, forehead, and eyes, as if the touch of her lips could have relieved his pain and restored some of the life which was leaving him. Think of the tortures of that mother, an impotent witness of her son’s martyrdom in those hours of mortal anguish--a mother who knew that _she herself_ was the cause of his sufferings, that _she_ had transmitted to him the terrible disease against which human science was powerless! _Now_ I understood the secret tragedy of her life! How easy it was to reconstruct the stages of that long Calvary.