As for the Empress, she had, as we have seen, borne herself wonderfully well in the first moments which had followed upon the tragedy, but afterward her nerves gave way entirely, and it was then that she had to be kept in strict seclusion, and under the care of trained nurses. It was said that her reason had given way under the load of her anxiety for her small son, and that the thought of his serious condition had weighed down so thoroughly on her mind that she had grown melancholy to an alarming extent. The story was believed perhaps because it suited so many people to think that it was true, and, besides, the political situation in Russia was becoming so alarming that it entirely absorbed public attention. The war with Japan had come to an ignominious end, and shown the many failings, as well as the thorough insufficiency, of the Government. The first symptoms of the Revolution were clearly appearing on the horizon, with its attendant horrors. Everybody felt that something had to be done in order to avert a catastrophe the extent of which it was impossible to foresee, but which was generally considered as being inevitable, unless the Czar made up his mind to grant the reforms for which his whole Empire was clamoring. During those years, which were the prelude of other even more eventful ones that were later on to sweep away the Throne of the Romanoffs, Nicholas II. might still have regained the popularity which he had lost. If he had only bravely and courageously faced his people, and tried to get into direct contact with them, he could have secured for his dynasty a new lease of life. He was not liked, it is true, and he was not trusted, which was still worse; but nations are sometimes apt to be led by impulse, and it is certain that Russia would have felt grateful to him if he had only made an appeal to its loyalty for his person, and asked of her to help him in the task of repairing the wounds caused by the disastrous campaign that had come to an end with the signature of the Treaty of Portsmouth. But the Czar ignored the wishes of his subjects and refused to acknowledge the justice of their claims to be taken into his confidence. He was narrow-minded, cruel by disposition, and though not at all an autocrat, yet every inch a tyrant. He was even something worse than that; he was a coward, and this is a defect which neither nations nor women forgive in those to whom they find their destinies intrusted. The remembrance of that dreadful Sunday when a crowd of peaceful workmen, under the leadership of the afterward notorious priest, Gapone, marched toward the Winter Palace, to be met with the firing of machine-guns that laid them low by hundreds on the pavement--the remembrance of this bloody deed has never been effaced from the mind of the Russian nation. It traced between itself and its Czar a line of demarcation which could never be removed later on.