“The scarcity of food had preyed on the Empress’s mind for many months, and one of the last conversations she ever had with Rasputin was on that subject. The winter of 1916 set in early, and the snows were so deep that transportation of all kinds of things, food included, was greatly impeded. I remember that the Empress said to Rasputin that nature itself seemed to be conspiring against poor Russia that year. “The rioting in Petrograd increased, and even in my bed I could hear echoes of it around the palace. Shots I heard and horrid yells. I tried to get out of bed, but the Empress soothed me. ‘It is bad, of course,’ she said, ‘but it will quiet soon. The poor people are mad with hunger. They will be given food and then all this will be over.’ Soon the palace guards, the regiments on duty in Tsarskoe Selo, began to show signs of demoralization. They were afraid for their own lives, and you cannot wonder that they were. The Empress used to go out in the cold and snow in the dead of night and talk to the men, reassure them, comfort them. ‘Nothing will happen,’ she told them. But for her I believe the last man would have thrown away his gun and fled. Her will and her resolution alone kept them at their posts.” “Do you think that the Empress really believed that it was a riot and not a revolution?” I asked. It was history this woman was telling me, history that will live in libraries a thousand years after we two, and all of us, are dust. I wanted to know the exact truth. “I am sure she did,” said Mme. Virubova. “If she had dreamed that it was a revolution she would have sent earlier for the Emperor, who, you know, was at the front with his army. She was alone and she faced the trouble alone, but if she had known the full extent of the trouble she would have wanted the Emperor where he would be safer than out there among that murderous gang. She did not know that Russia was in revolution, nor would she believe it at first when she was told that the army had gone over to the revolutionists. The officers of the guard told her, but she simply shook her head. Finally, Grand Duke Paul came tearing out to Tsarskoe in his highest power motor car. He convinced her that it was true. Even then her steel nerves endured. ‘Send for the Emperor,’ she said calmly and sternly. ‘I am going back to my sick children.’ And she went.”