News of the arrest of the unfortunate Sovereign spread like lightning through the whole Palace, and, as if she had been stricken with the plague, nearly all her attendants left her in the space of a few hours. Out of her six maids, only one remained “true to her salt,” as they say in the East, and even the women who had waited on the Grand Duchesses hastened to pack their things and to run away, in spite of the fact that the young Princesses were known to be desperately ill. The Princess Dondoukoff was removed by order of Korniloff, and for two days the sick children were attended only by their mother and myself. The Empress was experiencing in the most cruel way imaginable the ingratitude of mankind. If Count Benckendorff had not had his own cook prepare her meals, she would have been exposed to death from hunger amidst all the splendours of her magnificent Palace. At last the Count had to apply to the Revolutionary Government, and servants were sent to replace those who had abandoned us, and to ensure the regular service of the prisoners. All through these dreadful days none of us knew what had happened to the Czar, and this incertitude was, as can easily be imagined, adding to the misery and anguish of his wife. At last Count Benckendorff received a wire from Prince Dolgoroukoff (not Dolgorouky, as the foreign papers have printed; they are two distinct families), one of the attendants of Nicholas II., that the deposed Sovereign was being brought back to Czarskoi Selo, where the Revolutionary Government had decided he was for the present to be interned. The news was immediately communicated to the Empress and proved a consolation to her in her sorrows. We all of us, the few who were left of the splendid retinue of servants of former days, wondered how our master would look, and braced ourselves for the painful task of receiving him, a prisoner of state, in the Palace where he had ruled as an all-powerful autocrat. It was on a dark and dreary March morning that he returned to us. Strict orders had been given to the soldiers composing the guard in charge of the Palace gates not to treat him otherwise than they would a colonel, (he had persisted all through his reign in wearing a Colonel’s epaulettes), because he was henceforward to be known as plain Nicholas Alexandrovitsch Romanoff, and though we had been apprised of the fact, yet we were not prepared for what was to follow, and we were horrified to see, from the window at which we watched, the officer on duty give orders to salute Prince Dolgoroukoff, who sat beside the Emperor in the automobile that brought them home, with the honours due to his rank as general, whilst the deposed Sovereign was treated as his inferior. The meaning of the Revolution had never been made so plain to us as by this significant incident.