Author’s Note
152 Words
Author’s NoteAlthough the hero and heroine of this novel are fictitious, most of the other characters are real and the background is factual.
I am very grateful for details of the time from The Russian Journal of Lady Londonderry written about the same journey that she and her husband, ‘the proud Marquis’, took to Russia in 1836 and to that entrancing history The Romanovs by Virginia Cowles.
Czar Nicholas I was undoubtedly the most alarming Sovereign in Europe. His ice-cold eyes struck such terror into the hearts of his Courtiers that one of them, after his death, confessed that he kept the Emperor’s portrait turned to the wall.
“I had such a fear of the original,” he confessed, “that even a copy with those terrible eyes frightens and embarrasses me.”
The Secret Police in the ‘Third Section’ terrorised the whole country especially the intellectuals and the Jews. No one was safe from them and no one knew where they would strike next.
- Writer
