The christening of the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna was solemnised with great pomp at Czarskoi Selo, after which the Court moved to St. Petersburg, and the young Empress took possession of her new apartments in the Winter Palace. These had been gorgeously fitted up with magnificent silk hangings manufactured in Lyons, and copied from those which adorn the rooms occupied by Marie Antoinette in the Royal Palace of Fontainebleau in France. This had been a surprise of the Czar to his wife, but the latter, instead of being pleased, was superstitiously affected by this remembrance of the unfortunate Queen of France. It has never yet been told that when the Empress was quite a child in London an old gipsy woman whom she had met when walking with her sisters in Richmond Park, had prophesied misfortune to her and to her sister Elizabeth, saying that they would both marry in a distant country, where nothing but tears and sorrow awaited them. This fact, which she had never forgotten, had more to do than one imagined with that weight of sadness which seemed to be always pressing on Alexandra Feodorovna, though of course she avoided mentioning it. Nevertheless she tried to shake off the premonitions with which her soul became filled, when she saw the rooms which had been prepared for her, and she applied herself to give them that touch of intimacy which she invariably communicated to all the places where she lived. Big palms were brought in, and put in different corners, and a few valuable pictures were hung on the walls. But the Empress did not care for paintings, and when she was asked whether she would not have a few of those in the Ermitage collection brought to her, as was done in the case of her husband’s grandmother, the Empress Marie Alexandrovna, she refused, saying that she did not care to deprive the public of the sight of them. In general, art did not appeal to her, but she read a good deal, and played on the piano with considerable pleasure, without, however, having the talent for music which distinguished her eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga, who became quite an artist later on. It was the Empress’ custom before she began to play to take off her rings, of which she possessed some beautiful specimens, and to throw them on the piece of furniture nearest at hand, forgetting afterwards where she had put them. This sometimes caused considerable annoyance, as they could not always be found immediately, and a frantic search was made all over the Palace, until at last they turned up in some impossible place or other. Among these rings was one containing a beautiful pink diamond, the Empress’ engagement ring, which she preferred to all others, and which she constantly wore. Nevertheless she could not, even in the case of this favourite jewel, divest herself of the curious habit of taking it off her finger now and then, and playing with it, as a child might have done, sometimes quite unconscious that she was so doing.