This interview concluded, I was taken through a long series of apartments filled with tapestries, porcelain, carvings, portraits, and the like, to be received by the Empress. She was slight in figure, graceful, with a most kindly face and manner, and she put me at ease immediately, addressing me in English, and detaining me much longer than I had expected. She, too, spoke of the Chicago Exposition, saying that she had ordered some things of her own sent to it. She also referred very pleasantly to the Rev. Dr. Talmage of Brooklyn, who had come over on one of the ships which brought supplies to the famine-stricken; and she dwelt upon sundry similarities and dissimilarities between our own country and Russia, discussing various matters of local interest, and was in every way cordial and kindly. The impression made by the Emperor upon me at that time was deepened during my whole stay. He was evidently a strong character, but within very unfortunate limits--upright, devoted to his family, with a strong sense of his duty to his people and of his accountability to the Almighty. But more and more it became evident that his political and religious theories were narrow, and that the assassination of his father had thrown him back into the hands of reactionists. At court and elsewhere I often found myself looking at him and expressing my thoughts inwardly much as follows: "You are honest, true-hearted, with a deep sense of duty; but what a world of harm you are destined to do! With your immense physical frame and giant strength, you will last fifty years longer; you will try by main force to hold back the whole tide of Russian thought; and after you will come the deluge." There was nothing to indicate the fact that he was just at the close of his life.