ANGEL WITHOUT WINGS: Royal Martyr Maria Romanova From the Memoirs of Margaretta Eagar

In Peterhoff during the hot June weather the little Grand Duchess Marie was born. She was born good, I often think, with the very smallest trace of original sin possible. The Grand Duke Vladimir called her "The Amiable Baby," for she was always so good and smiling and gay. She is a very fine and pretty child, with great, dark-blue eyes and the fine level dark brows of the Romanoff family. Lately speaking of the child, a gentleman said that she had the face of one of Botticelli's angels. But good and sweet-tempered as she is, she is also very human, as the following stories will show. When she was a very little child, she was one day with her sister in the Empress's boudoir, where the Emperor and Empress were at tea. The Empress had tiny vanilla-flavoured wafers called biblichen, of which the children were particularly fond, but they were not allowed to ask for anything from the tea table. The Empress sent for me, and when I went down little Marie was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes drowned in tears and something was swallowed hastily. "Dere! I've eaten it all up," said she, "you tan’t det it now." I was properly shocked, and suggested bed at once as a suitable punishment. The Empress said, "Very well, take her," but the Emperor intervened, and begged that she might be allowed to remain, saying, "I was always afraid of the wings growing, and I am glad to see she is only a human child."