What with one thing and another, the unpopularity of the young Sovereign was already an established fact when the Coronation took place at Moscow. It appeared quite plainly on the day she made her public entry into the ancient city, when the crowds greeted her with absolute silence, whilst they vociferously cheered the Dowager Empress. Alexandra felt this deeply, and when she was alone in her rooms she wept profusely over this manifestation of the displeasure of the nation in regard to her person. It was the first time that I had seen her giving way to grief of any kind, and it affected me very much, especially in view of what was to follow. I had already learnt to love this sweet, gentle lady, who seemed to be pursued with such persistent bad luck, and whose actions were misunderstood by the very people who ought to have appreciated the real motives which guided her. The Empress had a high sense of duty, but a mistaken idea of what it consisted. She was far too desirous of winning the approval of her subjects to set herself to do it in the right way, and besides, she had no one to point out to her the various idiosyncrasies of the Russian nation and of Russian society. She did not wish to go against what she considered to be the national feelings of the people over whom she reigned, and yet she contrived to wound these feelings at almost every step she took. [Illustration: _Paul Thompson_ THRONE ROOM IN THE KREMLIN AT MOSCOW] A terrible example of this occurred during this same Coronation I am talking about. Every one knows the sad accident which was to mar it, and which offered an analogy with the one that occurred in Paris during the wedding festivities of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Thanks to the negligence and carelessness of those who ought to have known better, a popular festival which was one of the distinctive features of the whole pageant of the Coronation, ended in dire disaster, and something like twenty thousand people were crushed to death on the Khodinka Field near Moscow. That same night a ball was to take place at the French Embassy. The Ambassador, the Count de Montebello, sent one of his attachés to the Master of the Ceremonies, asking whether he was to postpone it in view of the catastrophe which had taken place in the morning. This official who, with others, had applied himself to keep the Czar in ignorance of the magnitude of the disaster, took it upon himself to reply that there was no reason for this change in the programme, and the Court accordingly repaired to the French Embassy. The young Empress, who had heard from one of her ladies the truth as to what had taken place, was most unhappy at the necessity of appearing in public on the day when such a terrible calamity had overtaken so many people, but she felt afraid to say what she thought, out of dread that one might think she had seized hold of the first pretext she could find in order to avoid showing herself at the Montebellos.