Rebuffed on every side, Alexandra Feodorowna first sought comfort and advice from her sister, the Grand-Duchess Elisabeth, who, by reason of her residing in Moscow, where her husband, the Grand-Duke Sergius, occupied the position of Governor-General, did not often see her. The Grand Duchess, in response to an invitation which she received to come to Tsarskoye Selo, took the first train. When consulted by the Empress in regard to the difficulties with which she found her path beset, she could not find a solution for them, perhaps because she did not honestly seek it. Elisabeth, as well as her husband, was very ambitious, and they would not have been sorry to see Alexandra Feodorowna estranged from all her new family, in order to have her entirely under their influence and control, and to dominate through her the weak Nicholas II., whose character was already beginning to be known, with all its faults and defects, by his near relatives, as well as by his Ministers and advisers. Elisabeth, therefore, advised her sister to try and keep at arm’s-length from her mother-in-law, uncles, aunts, and cousins, and especially to be suspicious of her two brothers-in-law, who were represented to her as being her natural enemies, notwithstanding the fact that one of them, the Grand-Duke George, was consumptive and did not live in St. Petersburg, the climate of which he could not endure, while the second, the Grand-Duke Michael, was a youth of sixteen, hardly out of school. Alexandra Feodorowna, however, became suspicious of this advice, perhaps because she distrusted the Grand-Duke Sergius just as much as her other relatives. Yet advice she felt she must have. It would have been natural for her to seek that of her brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and of her other sisters, the Princess Victoria of Battenberg and the Princess Henry of Prussia, but while the former had never been her favorite, the latter refused--at the instigation of her husband, most probably--to be mixed up in things which did not concern her, and intrenched herself behind her ignorance of Russian customs and Russian society. The Empress felt frantic, and it was then that she was seized with violent attacks of homesickness, which she did not attempt to conceal. More than once she was heard to say that she wished she were back in Germany, where at least she would find people capable of understanding her and of advising her well and soundly. Germany has always, as is but too well known to-day, maintained an army of spies in Russia. Very quickly a report of what was going on in Tsarskoye Selo reached the ears of William II. He saw his opportunity and forthwith wrote to his cousin, reminding her of their former friendship and telling her that he was entirely at her disposal to help her, by his knowledge of Russian affairs, which he professed was very great, and by his experience of the world.