Nicholas II. was fond of Colonel Orloff, whom he had recently appointed one of his aides-de-camp. The Sovereign liked from time to time to go and dine or have supper at the mess of some regiment or other of the Guards, either at Tsarskoye Selo, Peterhof, or St. Petersburg. These entertainments used to last generally into the small hours of the morning, and ill-natured people said that the Czar when in this company of young men, which was more congenial to him than the one he was compelled to see generally, allowed himself to have more glasses of wine than were good for him, and to indulge in subjects of conversation he would have done better to avoid. Whether this was true or not, it is of course difficult to say, but the fact remains that Nicholas liked these “family festivities,” as he used to call them, and that he always returned home in a good temper after having attended them. Colonel Orloff was aware of this weakness of the Sovereign, and one day he proposed to him to go and hear some regimental singers at the mess of his own Lancer regiment, stationed at Peterhof, the same regiment of which the Empress was Colonel-in-chief. Nicholas II. consented and a day was fixed. On the morning of that day Colonel Orloff sought Madame Wyrubewa; the two had a long conversation, the result of which was their reading together a certain page in French history relating how Louis XIII. had been compelled to seek the hospitality of his wife, Anne of Austria, on a stormy night when it had not been possible for him to return from Paris to St.-Germain, where he resided, an incident that had had world-wide consequences in the birth of the child who was to become in time Louis XIV. After that the Colonel returned to the Palace, where he was on duty that day, and his friend went to seek the Empress and to try to induce her to lend a helping hand to the plot which they had both engineered.