Alexandra Feodorowna had been subjected to a strict examination of her political activity by the military authorities in charge of the district of Petrograd, and particularly by General Korniloff, who had a personal grudge against her and who did not spare her in the scathing reproaches which he addressed to her. But nothing could shake the equanimity of the haughty Czarina. She sneered at the General, she scorned his threats, and proudly declared to him that she would not reply to any of his questions, as she did not recognize his right to address them to her. While her husband showed no sign of impatience under the affronts which were showered down upon him (on the contrary, he exhibited absolute submission to the will of those who had taken him captive), the Empress remembered the position which she had occupied a few days before, and simply smiled at her persecutors with a disdain that had certainly something exasperating about it if one considers the intellectual and moral standard of the people to whom this proof of her contempt was addressed. Alexandra refused to show that she suffered from the change that had taken place in her position, while her husband hardly knew whether he was suffering from it or not. There lay the difference in their two characters and in their way of meeting the catastrophe which had changed their whole lives and destinies. There came, however, a day when the composure of the Consort of Nicholas II. failed, when she at last gave way to despair. It was during the afternoon when her friend and the confidante of all her thoughts, Anna Wyrubewa, was taken away from her, and carried off to the fortress of SS. Peter and Paul in Petrograd. Until that day the Empress had not felt quite alone in her misery. There was at least near her one person with whom she could speak about all those dear dead ones whose memory she either cherished or worshiped. So long as that friend was there the miserable Empress could talk about Orloff, Raspoutine, and the prayer-meetings during which the latter evoked for her the spirit of the former. When Anna was taken away from her this last consolation came also to an end. Henceforward the solitude of Alexandra Feodorowna was to be complete; and nothing was left to her except her eyes to weep, and her memory to remind her of those whom she had loved and lost. The horrors which were to follow, the Siberian exile whither she was to be sent, were to leave her unmoved. She had inwardly died in that terrible hour when the last friend and the sharer of all the secrets of her life had been snatched away from her arms. XXVIII THE EXILE These days in Tsarskoye Selo which seemed so hard to bear were Paradise compared with what awaited the previous masters of this Imperial place.