It is to the credit of Kerensky and the ministers that they never would consent to any suggestion that Nicholas be thrown into a dungeon or otherwise harshly treated. As long as the family remained at Tsarskoe Selo, which was until the 1st of August, Russian style, and August 13 in the western calendar, it lived in its accustomed manner. The servants, most of them, remained at their posts, and while no member of the family was allowed to leave the palace grounds on any pretext, nor the palace itself except when accompanied by armed guards, they had the freedom of their home and the society of a few friends. They were not allowed to telephone, and all letters reaching them had first to be read by the officer in command of the guards. Mme. Virubova told me that in spite of Kerensky’s good intentions, the deposed royalties were subjected to a number of petty annoyances which must have caused them all the resentment and humiliation their tormentors intended. The electric lights were sometimes turned off early in the evening, leaving the palace in darkness. There were days when the water was turned off and the family was deprived of bathing facilities. The soldiers on guard were not infrequently rude and churlish and openly exultant in the presence of their prisoners. Kerensky cannot be held responsible for these things, but he was responsible for depriving the former Empress of the society of her most intimate friend, Mme. Virubova. I have already told how she was arrested while still suffering from the effects of measles and thrown into a cell in Peter and Paul. The cell was damp and insanitary, and the sick woman suffered extreme misery all the time she was there. Surrounded constantly by soldiers, who watched her night and day, she was never alone even long enough to dress or to bathe. She is lame, as I have stated, and once she fell on the slippery floor of her cell and was unable for a long time to rise. The soldiers on guard refused to help her, but simply stood and laughed at her efforts to reach her bed. “Twice during the months of my confinement they let my mother visit me,” she told me. “But I was allowed to talk to her only in presence of the guard and across a wide table in the governor’s room.”