In the end I sensed that this event, which had occurred in the sands of Central Asia, had marked our family's history forever in a mysterious and very intimate fashion. I also noticed that it was never spoken of when Charlotte 's son, my uncle Sergei, was among the guests…
The truth is that if I spied on these nocturnal confidences it was, above all, to explore my grandmother's French past. The Russian side of her life interested me less. I was like that investigator who, in examining a meteorite, is primarily attracted by the little gleaming crystals embedded in its basalt surface. And just as one dreams of a distant journey whose goal is yet unknown, so I dreamed of Charlotte 's balcony, of her Atlantis, where I believed I had left a part of myself the previous summer.
2
7
That summer I felt extremely nervous about encountering the tsar again… Yes, of seeing the young emperor and his wife once more in the streets of Paris. Just as you dread meeting a friend whose doctor has informed you of his imminent death and who, in blissful ignorance, proceeds to tell you all about his plans.
For how could I have traveled with Nicholas and Alexandra if I knew them to be doomed? If I knew that even their daughter Olga would not be spared? And that even the other children, to whom Alexandra had not yet given birth, would meet the same tragic fate?
I was secretly overjoyed that evening when I caught sight of a little collection of poems on my grandmother's lap that she was leafing through as she sat amid the flowers upon her balcony. Had she sensed my unease, remembering the incident of the previous summer? Or did she simply want to read us one of her favorite poems?
I came to sit beside her on the floor itself, resting my elbow on the head of the stone bacchante. My sister stood on the other side, leaning on the handrail, her gaze lost in the warm mist of the steppes.