Free The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) by Helen Rappaport Page B

blow them kisses, endeared her to everyone.
    ‘Our daughter made a great impression everywhere’, Nicholas told
    his mother. The first thing President Faure asked Alexandra each
    day was the health of la petite duchesse . Everywhere they went little Olga was greeted by shouts of ‘ Vive la bébé ’; some even called her La tsarinette .69 A polka was specially composed ‘Pour la Grande Duchesse Olga’ and all kinds of souvenirs and commemorative china
    were on sale, featuring her picture as well as that of her parents. By the end of her parents’ foreign tour, the little Russian grand duchess was one of the most discussed royal children in the world. She was
    certainly the richest, with it being alleged that £1 million had been invested in her name in British, French and other securities when
    she was born.70 Nicholas had certainly settled money on his daughter, 41
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    FOUR SISTERS
    as he would for all his children, but it would be far less than the
    outlandish amounts suggested and was, effectively, money left them
    in Alexander III’s will.71 Nevertheless rumours of Croesus-like riches being heaped on the child led to fanciful ideas put about in the
    American press that little Olga was rocked in a mother-of-pearl
    cradle, her nappies fixed with gold safety pins set with pearls.72
    After a private nineteen-day visit to Ernie and his family in
    Darmstadt in October, Nicholas and Alexandra returned to Russia
    overland on the imperial train and promptly retreated to their quiet
    life at Tsarskoe Selo, where they celebrated Olga’s first birthday in November. Alexandra was by now pregnant again and her second
    pregnancy proved a difficult one. By December she was suffering
    severe pain in her side and back and there were fears of a miscar-
    riage.73 Ott and Günst were summoned and confined Alexandra to
    bed; there was a total clampdown on news and it was early the
    following year, 1897, before even members of the imperial family
    were told.
    After a long and wearying seven weeks of bed rest, Alexandra
    was finally allowed outside in a wheelchair. She was not sorry to
    have to miss the winter season in Petersburg, but in PR terms this
    was a disaster. Her absence from view and the rumours of her
    continuing poor health had done their work in further eroding what
    little goodwill she enjoyed in Russia. Superstition and rumour began
    to gain a foothold and persisted ever after, focusing on the tsaritsa’s desperate hopes for a boy. One story in circulation was that ‘four
    blind nuns from Kiev’ had been brought to Tsarskoe Selo at the
    suggestion of the Montenegrin princess, Militza (wife of Grand
    Duke Petr Nikolaevich), who herself was a fan of faith healing and
    the occult. These women, it was said, had brought with them ‘four
    specially blessed candles and four flasks of water from a well in
    Bethlehem’. Having lit the candles at each corner of Alexandra’s
    bed and sprinkled her with the Bethlehem water, they assured her
    she would have a boy.74 Another tale suggested that a deformed and
    half-blind cripple called Mitya Kolyaba, who had supposed powers
    of prophecy that only became apparent during violent epileptic fits,
    was also brought in to work a miracle on the empress. On being
    taken to see her he had said nothing, but had later prophesied the
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    LA PETITE DUCHESSE
    birth of a male child and was sent gifts by the grateful imperial
    couple.75 But nothing could allay either Alexandra’s rising anxiety
    or the pressure she was under, made worse when her sister Irene,
    Princess Henry of Prussia, gave birth to a second boy in November
    and her sister-in-law Xenia produced her second baby – a son – in
    January.
    Although she was up and about again, Alexandra could not face
    a return to public duties, even in a wheelchair – her sciatica being
    aggravated by the discomforts of the pregnancy. ‘I am beginning to
    look a pretty