Christmas in 1834 was especially remembered by Natalya Nikolaevna with magnificent balls and social events. She was so happy to be in the palace that at times she looked like a little girl, all her thoughts were occupied with dresses and dances.
Waltzes and mazurkas played a cruel joke with the beautiful Natalie. After one of the balls she lost her expected child, and Alexander Sergeevich “sent” her to the village to his mother to improve her health.
The elder sisters Alexandra and Ekaterina were overjoyed at the arrival of Natasha. After all, together with her, fun always burst into the house, breaking their measured, boring, very miserable existence.
Natalya Nikolaevna, after watching her dear sisters languish in the wilderness of Kaluga, decided to attach them to the palace as maids of honor. She shared her plans with her husband.
Alexander Sergeevich was skeptical about his wife's idea. But Natasha could no longer be stopped. And soon Azinka and Koko moved to Petersburg and settled under the same roof with the poet and his family.
NOT BEAUTY, BUT WITH A SPIRIT
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The eldest of the sisters, Ekaterina Goncharova, was immediately appointed a maid of honor to the court. Tall, slender, with a graceful graceful gait, she was a very interesting specimen. “A charismatic person,” they said about her. “Not a beauty, but with a twist …” And soon the brilliant officer Georges Dantes began to look after Katenka.
- Ah, Natalie, my soul. You have no idea how happy I am. I love him more than life, I am ready to do everything for him.
- That's all … But are you in a hurry, Coco? Men are insidious, and your Georges is still a rake. And just now he was dragging after me, and after Mashenka Baryatinskaya.
- Don't talk nonsense. He loves me. And the day before yesterday he even talked about the wedding, I think he will dare to propose to me by Easter.
What really drove Dantes? According to some, their relationship with Katya was nothing more than a screen behind which he hid his love for Natalie. According to others, having a passion for Pushkin's wife, Dantes, unexpectedly for himself, fell in love with a sensitive heart Katenka.
Be that as it may, but soon Catherine and Georges announced the upcoming wedding. In the salons they talked only about this. The ladies, fanning themselves with fans, washed the bones of a strange couple with pleasure.
- How? Does he marry the elder Goncharova, an ugly, black and poor white-faced sister, a poetic beauty?
- Well, who, pray tell, will admire a mediocre painting if Raphael's Madonna is nearby?
- There is a hunter before any painting.
- Besides, if it is much cheaper, and therefore more affordable …
In the meantime, the casket was simply opening. By the time it was announced about the upcoming wedding of Dantes and Ekaterina Goncharova, the bride was in her fourth month of pregnancy. Neither Dantes nor his adoptive father dared to go to a grandiose scandal, which would have inevitably erupted if the virgin, maid of honor of the highest court, Ekaterina Goncharova, gave birth to an illegitimate child. This would threaten Dantes with expulsion from secular society, and it would be possible to put an end to his career.
For Coco herself, this turn of events was very unexpected, and, by her own admission, in the first days she did not dare to believe that all this was not a dream. She was certainly not blind enough to understand nothing at all. She realized that she was destined to love hopelessly, and therefore, as in a magical dream, she listened to the official proposal of the hand and heart. She closed her eyes, afraid to believe the happiness that befell her.
Natalie tried in vain to open her eyes, painting pictures of her future family life.
- Catherine, listen. You will constantly suspect him, be jealous and suffer. But only hurtful indifference will be your answer to your passionate love.
- The strength of my feeling for him is so great that sooner or later it will conquer his heart, and before this bliss, suffering does not fear.
In a word, Katenka believed the groom, although his behavior proved anything but love. After all, two weeks before their engagement, Georges wooed the young and beautiful princess Mashenka Baryatinskaya, but was rejected. Moreover, in front of the bride, languishing with jealousy, Georges continued to look after Natalia Nikolaevna …
BLIND LOVE
Be that as it may, but in January 1837 the wedding took place.
The behavior of the newlywed after the wedding gave new food for talk in society: he not only resumed his previous persecution of Natalie, but now emphatically showed his passion for her, not hesitating the presence of his wife.
As for Catherine, she seemed to be happy. At least that's what she wrote about in a letter to her brother:
“… I can ask heaven for only one favor - to be always as happy as now. But I admit frankly that this happiness scares me, it cannot last long, I feel it, it is too great for me, and this thought is the only thing that poisons my present life, because my husband is an angel.
And I am the happiest woman on earth."
What is it? Outright lie? Pretense? Deafness of an endlessly loving wife? Salvation of family honor in any way? This is most likely true. According to eyewitnesses, Dantes was one person at home, next to Catherine and his adoptive father, and completely different - in society. Catherine loved the first, but she only put up with the existence of the second. But Alexandra Goncharova, who occasionally visited her sister in her new home, wrote the following: “… she feels better than in the first days: she is calmer, but, it seems to me, rather sad. She's too smart to show it, and too proud too …"
SINNEL VICTIM
What Ekaterina Nikolaevna had to experience in reality, we will never know. Fate demanded an atoning sacrifice for all the troubles brought to Pushkin by the Goncharov family, and the sinless Katenka became such a sacrifice.
It is terrible to imagine what mental anguish tormented her after the death of Alexander Sergeevich. After all, she loved the poet's killer. How could you look Natalie in the eye?
After Dantes was expelled from Russia, Catherine naturally followed him. She never condemned her husband, for her he was always right. But was she happy?
In a foreign land, the doors of not every house were thrown open in front of the spouses. And the Russians did not want to know Pushkin's killer at all. Natalie's beloved sister did not send letters either … However, Katenka did not wait. How can you forgive the one who took the most precious thing from you?
Ekaterina Nikolaevna gave birth to three daughters, but was looking forward to her son. God heard her prayer. In September 1843, she gave birth to a son, and a few weeks later she died of childbirth fever. Not a single complaint escaped her lips during the agony. Her only words were the words of prayer, in which she thanked heaven for the happy moments sent to her from the day of her marriage.
Her husband's grief was deep and sincere. He remained a widower at thirty, with four children. The memories of the woman he loved never left him. In a brilliant position, which he subsequently occupied, he invariably refused to marry again and constantly recalled his Catherine.
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Dantes' daughter Leonia Charlotte, who grew up abroad, managed to master the Russian language perfectly. She adored Russia and more than anything else - Pushkin. Leonia Charlotte's room with a large portrait of Alexander Sergeevich in front of the analogue, in fact, turned into a prayer house. Just think … Dantes's daughter prayed in front of a portrait of Pushkin! She stopped talking to her father after she learned that he was the killer. The consequence of this strange love for the great Russian poet was madness. Her father put Leonia Charlotte in a hospital for the mentally ill, where she soon died …
First wife, then daughter. Dantes had no doubt that this was Retribution.