When Sturmer heard about the conversation which had terminated with such violence between Alexandra Feodorowna and the Grand-Duke Nicholas he saw at once the capital that could be made out of the incident. He also disliked the Grand Duke; it was therefore easy for him to enter with alacrity and zeal into the plans of revenge that were being harbored by the Czarina, to whom he reported that Nicholas Nicholaievitch was trying to supplant the Czar, to get himself appointed Dictator of the Empire; that he had, moreover, the most sinister designs against the little Cesarewitsch, as well as against her, who, as he had openly declared, ought to be locked up in a convent. He pointed out further to the distracted Empress that the weakness of character of her husband might easily make him a prey to the ambitions of his cousin and cause him to lend himself to the latter’s schemes. Besides this, it was against all the traditions of autocracy for a member of the Imperial Family to aspire to make for himself an independent position outside the Czar, and if the Grand Duke was allowed to work out the consolidation of his popularity among the army and the military party a Palace revolution could easily follow, which would overthrow Nicholas II. and dethrone him in favor of some other Romanoff, willing to become an easy tool in the hands of the Grand-Duke Commander-in-chief. After this it became the one object of Alexandra Feodorowna’s ambition to deprive her cousin of his command, to have him exiled somewhere far from St. Petersburg, which by this time had been renamed Petrograd.