With her servants Alexandra Feodorovna never spoke, except in reference to questions concerning their duties. She used to have half an hour’s conversation with me in the morning and evening, in regard to matters concerning her dresses or jewels, and gave me her instructions as to what she required to be done in regard to them. But it was only after a number of years, and after I had helped her nurse the young Princesses during an attack of scarlet fever, that the Empress began to talk with me of domestic matters, and of different other things which worried her. She hated familiarity, and firmly believed that it was part of her duties to keep people at a distance. And yet what a kind heart she had! It was sufficient for her to know that any misfortune had befallen one of her attendants or servants, to show them all the sympathy with which her soul was full. But in normal times she maintained an attitude of reserve that was always misunderstood, and for which she was more than once bitterly reproached. [Illustration: _Paul Thompson_ ALEXANDER HALL IN THE KREMLIN AT MOSCOW] During that month of November which saw the first anniversary of the Czar’s marriage the Court was expecting the birth of the first child of the Imperial pair. All had made up their minds that it was going to be a son, an heir to the vast estates and to the throne of the Romanoffs. The thought that it might be a girl had never crossed the mind either of the nation or of the sovereigns themselves. Preparations without number had been made for the arrival into the world of that much-longed-for boy, and for some days no one had slept in the Palace of Czarskoi Selo. At last the doctors, who for weeks had not left the Imperial residence, were summoned to the bedside of Alexandra Feodorovna. The poor woman had a very hard time, and for long hours her life trembled in the balance, whilst every hope of seeing the child born alive had almost disappeared. Great was the joy, therefore, when its cry was heard for the first time, a joy, however, that was turned into an intense disappointment when it was announced that the baby was nothing but a poor little girl, tiny and delicate; a little girl whom no one wanted, and whom no one was prepared to like, except the mother, who took it to her heart with all the tenderness which, though restrained, formed one of the bases of her strange, perhaps not lovable, but altogether admirable character. CHAPTER IV THE CORONATION