Chapter 125: Death Sentence
The next few days of Bruno's visit to Saint Petersburg were roughly the same. The man and his family were free to walk about Saint Petersburg's streets and enjoy all it had to offer. While at the same time, they would return to the Tsar's Palace in the evening and witness an even greater number of Russian Noblemen and their families gathering.
Bruno became acquainted with many, many people during this time. He quickly was able to categorize them into two groups. Men who he could make use of to expand his ambitions of extracting raw materials from Russia for the sake of his own industrial exploits.
And those who were completely and utterly useless to him and his goals. The more noblemen Bruno met, however, the more he was starting to realize why revolution was a matter of inevitability within the Russian Empire.
Russia's population was large, much larger than most countries in the world. As was their territory. Considering their history was almost as old as Germany's, in addition to this, it explained why there were over a million people in Russia who could be considered being of noble status.
With so many noblemen, many of which had been among Russia's social elite for centuries, there were a lot of wastrels among them. This was in contrast to the German noble system, which had largely embraced meritocracy, especially in regards to military and scientific pursuits since the end of the Napoleonic wars.
In contrast, Russia only ended its system of serfdom in the previous century, and not in the early years of it at that. They were decades behind their western counterparts in many aspects of society. Including the concept of meritocracy becoming a widespread phenomenon.
This was, however, an even greater concern that Bruno quickly realized he had to deal with. And that was the idiotic, young, and unmarried sons of those noble families who could not for the life of them keep their eyes off his wife, or their more malicious intentions hidden from their lust filled gazes.
In Germany, Bruno seldom had to worry about noblemen desiring Heidi, or making an inappropriate move to snatch her away from him. As beautiful as she was, she was of the lowest status possible among the German nobility.
She was the bastard daughter of a German mediatized Prince, who had married into the lowest rungs of the noble hierarchy. And though Bruno didn't realize it at first, his wife was a bona fide princess in Russia, and that meant a lot to those ignorant degenerates who would do anything to try to raise their status, well, anything other than actually proving their merit. Heidi's exceptional social skills did not help with this matter either. She was as graceful as a butterfly, and had always helped Bruno save face among the nobles of the German Reich, as he was known for a rather anti-social personality.
Because of this, Bruno found himself having a hard time balancing his actions, especially when the day for the Grand Ball finally came, where the Tsar's palace was packed with thousands of noblemen and their families.