'Une injustice qu'on voit et qu'on tait: on la commet soi meme.' (An
injustice one sees and keeps quiet about: one commits it oneself.) I
wish more persons could or would recognize that truth."

As a child Nelka did not speak Russian, because there was no one
around using this language. After her school in Brussels, her mother
took her to Russia to St. Petersburg. She was then seventeen.

St. Petersburg 1895.

"For the last few days I have been most blissfully absorbed in
Taine's 'Ideal dans l'Art.' I never knew it was in a separate volume.
It is splendid. Of course you know 'Character' of Smiles. I don't
care for it much, so sermony. I am going to the Hermitage tomorrow
just to see the Dutch and Flemish schools."

The same year her mother took her to Paris and entered her to attend
lectures at the College de France while living at the Convent of the
Assumption.

Paris 1895.

"I have just come back from the College de France. I enjoyed the
lecture very much; it was on Stendhal. You will be perhaps surprised
to learn that my educational career has taken a sudden turn. I am
going into the Convent of the Assumption next week. Now don't be
horrified. The Assumption is an exception to all the convents;
besides the regular studies they have professors from the Sorbonne,
Lycee Henry IV and other colleges to come in and give lectures on
foreign literature, history, art, etc. Besides this unheard of
privilege they have an atelier for drawing with Ducet to correct, and
living models, men, women and children. Of course Mama never imagined
such a thing possible in a convent, the general idea of convents not
going beyond wax flowers. Here are the privileges I will have:

1) Clock-like life and no time lost.
2) No risk of disagreeable associations as they are most particular
who they take.
3) I will see Mama almost every day.

"I shall have to go to bed at eight! Just fancy that!!! But then I
have an astonishing capacity for sleeping and eating just now."

While in Paris, in addition to the general subjects and the lectures
at the Sorbonne, Nelka also studied music, in particular the violin,
and at a time was quite proficient in it, though she did not keep it
up, as she did with painting, which she continued for a number of
years.

Nelka's mother tried to bring her up in the Russian spirit with a
great veneration for the memory of her father. Nelka grew up with a
burning nationalistic feeling for Russia and a veneration