And yet the Empress accepted the news if not with resignation at least with composure. To tell the truth she was weary of Czarskoi Selo, where everything reminded her of former and happier times, and perhaps she was not sorry to have at last a complete change of surroundings. She declared herself ready to start as soon as ordered to do so and busied herself with the preparations for her approaching departure just as if it had been a holiday excursion. The only thing which she asked for was to see her sister, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, but though the latter was informed that she could if she wished proceed to Czarskoi Selo, she refused to do so, and contented herself with writing a very short and formal note to the Empress, who felt this want of heart far more than she admitted. These were indeed sad days that preceded the sad departure. None among us had the faintest hope of ever again seeing the kind masters we were parting from, and the prisoners themselves thought that they would never come back to this Russia that was behaving so harshly towards them. On the last evening the Emperor called us to his presence and thanked us for our faithful services. He was pale but otherwise unmoved. The whole thing seemed, to judge from his appearance, to constitute an episode that did not concern him. The Empress was agitated, but also resigned, and she tried to put on a gaiety which she did not feel. She had since the Revolution always worn black dresses, but on that evening she ordered me to prepare her for the morrow a dark blue costume. She did not wish strangers to think that she wore mourning for her misfortunes. No one slept that night in the Palace, and when the hour for departure sounded there was not one dry eye amongst us. I obtained permission to accompany my mistress to the railway station and part of the way. My heart was bursting with despair. They started—that unfortunate family—with an air of cheerful courage, on this momentous and awful journey. Without a sigh the Czarina bade good-bye to that Palace which had seen her greatness and her downfall. Probably she had, as Queen Elizabeth of Austria had once said, “died inwardly” long before that day, and nothing more could hurt her now. Without a tear she entered the train, such a shabby one when compared with the sumptuous cars in which she had been used to travel, and she did not even turn her head to look back on the theatre of her former splendour and misery. The whistle sounded, the engine began to move, and with it disappeared into space the haughty autocracy which had ruled over Russia—Holy Russia—since Peter the Great had organised it as an Empire, and which though no longer great, yet had remained an immense thing until the Revolution, with the mistakes and faults of its representatives, had finally destroyed it....