Three days later an officer sent by the government asked to see the young Grand Duchesses. He communicated to them the news that their parents were to be transported to Tobolsk in Siberia and that they were left entirely free to accompany them there or to remain at Czarskoi Selo, in which case they would be permitted to remain in the Palace and to occupy their present apartments. The girls did not hesitate one single moment and replied that they would not think of abandoning their father and mother, but would go with them wherever it pleased the government to send them. It is a curious thing that no one thought for one moment of suggesting that the little Alexis should be left in Europe, and the delicate child was not given a thought, but on the contrary despatched with alacrity to an exile which might easily kill him, as he was hardly strong enough to be able to withstand the rigour of the terrible climate to which he was being consigned. It was only after the Grand Duchesses had been called upon to make their decision that the Czar and his Consort were officially informed that they were about to be removed to Tobolsk. The place is about one of the worst in the whole of Siberia, both as regards temperature and resources. Half village and half town, its population consists of political exiles and prisoners, and of Yakoutes, a savage, nomad folk, that spends its time in the unexplored forests which surround the town, whence they emerge from time to time to sell the furs which they have gathered together in the winter. The thermometer falls below freezing point for months at a stretch, and altogether it is one of the dreariest spots in the whole world. It is to this living death and to this awful solitude that were to be consigned the man and the woman whom the world had known as the Emperor and Empress of All the Russias, together with their innocent children. The Tour du Temple, where Louis XVI. was confined, was not half so awful as this.