Alexander fell in love with Countess Julia von Hauke, lady-in-waiting to his sister (known, since her conversion to Orthodoxy, as Maria Alexandrovna, ranking only after her mother-in-law the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna). The countess was an orphaned German-Polish ward of the Russian Emperor, and daughter of the Emperor's former minister of war, Count Johann Morutz von Hauke, a Polish general of German descent. At that time, the Emperor Nicholas I was considering Alexander as a possible husband for his niece and, when he heard of Alexander's romance, he forbade the couple to marry.