Now the French Revolution stood full of meaning before me. During the coronation festivities in France, when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were being crowned, a number of shocking disasters occurred. These were similar to the tragedy that occurred at the coronation of my parents. In the former, when France’s economy declined and conditions were bad, only 35 per cent of the land was held by the French peasants; the rest was in the hands of the Church, the nobility and the crown. But Russia economically was strong in spite of the war and the devastation of the western areas. When a daughter was born to the royal couple, Marie Antoinette had eighty attendants at her service. History records that she was a gay woman with demands for unlimited luxury and extravagance. It was also said that during the critical economic conditions in her country, she had purchased an enormously expensive jewel for herself. They discovered much too late that this was not true. The Russian people would not have believed that Father and Mother had been extravagant. As Father commented, when the revolution broke out 75 to 80 per cent of Russian soil was in peasant hands. When one of the children in our family was born, we had only a few attendants. Besides, Mother never cared for gaiety or luxury. During the war we repaired our own clothes and made our own beds. As Louis XVI was betrayed by Mirabeau, so Father was betrayed by the Allies, with the help of the Duma and men like Kerensky, Ruzsky, Lenin, and Trotsky, and other foreign instigators. Many foreign elements gave aid and encouraged the revolution in my country. As horrors occurred in France, so did they in Russia. Marat asked for a quarter of a million lives, but Trotsky, Lenin, Apfelbaum and others of the clique demanded more than fifteen millions. Allegedly they all were guilty of something. Most of the educated classes, millions of peasants, and forty thousand Greek Orthodox clergymen were killed. Many of the revolutionists were shipped to Russia for the purpose of inciting the plundering, robbing and strangling of Russia. They were supported by the prisoners of war, mostly Austro-Hungarians and Germans. They were helped by a powerful branch of the Christian church, who were apparently desirous of detaching our people from the Greek Orthodox Church. Fortunately the Russian people were and still are very devoted to and proud of their own religion which they consider to be the true exponent of the Christian faith as delegated to us by the Apostles and particularly by the Apostle Paul. (Read M. Pierre Gilliard’s book, _Thirteen Years at the Russian Court_.)