The Princess Galitzyne, nevertheless, soon became a power at Court. She contrived to obtain large grants of money which the successive ministers of finance who took over the succession of Count Witte, were but too happy to arrange for her, in return for her protection. She was greedy and avaricious, cruel and cold hearted, and utterly devoid of scruples. In the Palace she was heartily disliked, yet no one dared to say a word against her, because it was well known that eventually she could become a terrible enemy of those of whom she thought she had reason to complain.
The Princess died a year or two before the great war, and for some time her place remained empty, until at last it was offered to Madame Narischkine, an intimate friend of the Empress Dowager, and one of the most respected women in St. Petersburg society.
Madame Narischkine was quite a different woman from her predecessor. She was kind, polite, amiable, and highly principled, as well as conscientious. She would never have hurt a fly, and she had always applied herself to smooth the path in life of all the people in whom she had happened to be interested.
Unfortunately she was not sympathetic with the Empress Alexandra, and the latter could never bring herself to treat her with the same familiarity as she had done the Princess Galitzyne. Then Madame Narischkine objected to Rasputin, and of course this was sufficient to prevent her being a persona grata. The Grand Duchess Elizabeth also did not care for her; perhaps because she felt that the new Mistress of the Robes had never quite approved of her. Madame Narischkine was a very discreet woman, but at the same time she could very well convey to persons whom she did not think fit to be upon terms of intimacy with her what she thought of them. The Empress never took to her, which was a great pity, and sometimes treated her with great rudeness and with an astonishing lack of consideration. But in spite of these difficulties with which her path was beset, Madame Narischkine behaved magnificently when the hour of danger sounded. When the Revolution broke out, she immediately repaired to Czarskoi Selo and never left the Empress through those days of sorrow and anxiety which saw the latter taken prisoner in her own palace. She volunteered, in spite of her advanced age (she is over seventy) to accompany her mistress into exile, but the request was declined by the provisional government, and Madame Narischkine had perforce to submit, but she was the last one to bid good-bye to the Empress and to the young Grand Duchesses before they entered the train which was to carry them away to the solitudes of Siberia. It is likely that if Madame Narischkine had, from the outset, been with the Czarina, many of the mistakes committed by the latter would have been avoided. As it was she followed the advice given her by the Princess Galitzyne, and this was never wise advice, because the Princess, who was a born flatterer, was most careful never to say to Alexandra Feodorovna anything which she knew or feared might displease her. Under her guidance the unfortunate Empress had not a chance to succeed in winning the affections of her subjects. Besides the Princess, there were four maids of honour attached to the person of the young Czarina. The first was the Countess Lamsdorff, with whom the Sovereign could not get on and to whom she took a violent dislike. Then came the Princess Bariatinsky, who also resigned her functions with a certain amount of “fracas,” and who made no mystery of the fact that she could not stand the lack of consideration with which she was being treated. A Caucasian lady, the Princess Orbeliani, took her place, and succeeded in retaining her difficult position until her death. Then there was a Princess Obolensky, who had much unpleasantness to bear, but who accepted everything with wonderful patience, thanks, it was said, to her attachment to the young Grand Duchesses, the daughters of Nicholas II. She is still with the Imperial family, and has accompanied them to Tobolsk, in spite of the opposition of her family, who would have liked her to leave the Empress. There was also another personage in the household who held there quite a privileged situation; this was Mademoiselle Schneider, whose duties consisted in reading to the Czarina, and who was the only attendant she had brought over with her from Darmstadt. Mademoiselle Schneider could enter the apartments of her mistress whenever she liked. She was the medium through whom Alexandra Feodorovna communicated with her relatives in Germany, to whom she always felt afraid to write by post, and she was also the one and only person with whom the Empress spoke German.