My father and mother started on their travels abroad and my brother Constantine and I were left in the entire charge of our grandmother. My brother, who was born two years later than I, had been christened Constantine in the hope that he would one day become the Emperor of Constantinople.
Children readily grow fond of people, especially of those who are kind to them. My grandmother was very nice to me, made much of me, and I loved her in spite of an extremely repellant odour that always seemed to hang about her. The stringent scents could not disguise this odour—I used to notice it particularly when I sat upon her knee. I was still more repelled by her clean yellowish hands covered with wrinkles, so shiny and slippery, the fingers bending over, and the nails unnaturally long. Her languid, lustreless eyes, that seemed almost dead, and the smile playing about her toothless mouth, produced an oppressive though not altogether unpleasant effect on those who saw her. I believed at that time that the languid expression of her eyes was due to the enormous pains she took over her toilet. At any rate I was told so. I felt sorry for her then, but now I think of it with disgust.
I had seen Potemkin once or twice. This huge, greasy, one-eyed monster was terrible.
The thing that awed me most about him, though he used to play with me and call me your Highness, was the fact that he never seemed afraid of my grandmother, like other people, but would speak boldly in her presence in his gruff, bellowing voice.
Another man whom I frequently saw in her company was Lanskoy. He was nearly always with her. The whole Court hovered about him and made much of him. Needless to say I did not understand who Lanskoy was at the time, and liked him. I was attracted by his curly hair, his shapely legs in tight elk-skin breeches, his happy, lighthearted smile, his diamonds and jewels, glittering all over him.