annielefroy: What a frightful blow was waiting for us; l what a bitter grief for me! So many memorie

annielefroy:

What a frightful blow was waiting for us; l what a bitter grief for me! So many memories, so many painful reflections pass through my mind, that I am still incapable of thinking clearly. I can think of nothing but our misfortune. I cannot sleep; I can only weep; I weep from the bottom of my heart. My unlucky journey to Russia how that sharpens my grief! In my leisure at Brighton, I had begun to put in order the very rough notes I had made in Russia on my relations with the Emperor Alexander. I am in possession of a most valuable sketch of his ideas and his political plans, gathered during my long talks with him. Now I take up that work again with religious fervour. I ransack my memory for every phrase he used. I press my conscience into the service; and I am astonished, as I proceed, to realise to what an extent he confided in me. What freedom, for a man so reserved and so mistrustful! He gave me a new interest in life. I had great political influence over him and I should soon have had more. He was the kind of man liable to become infatuated; and it was a new experience for him to have political relations with a woman. Here there was no occasion for pride and, possibly, none for distrust; since a woman’s zeal is not suspect. I had mapped out my course and should not have foundered in those dangerous seas. I knew the reefs, or rather the reef, for there was only one. As long as the secret of my influence went no further than ourselves, I should have kept my position. It would have been unique. I believe I should have done good, and I believe it sincerely.

— Daria Lieven (Dorothea von Lieven) on Alexander I after his death