I must here relate a fact that, so far as I know, has never been made public. After the Coronation the Empress, owing to over-fatigue, had an accident which destroyed some hopes of maternity she was nursing. She had not spoken of her condition in her family, and she told me that she felt very glad she had not done so, because most probably she would have been accused of some imprudence or other, the more so that her doctor said that the expected child would, in all probability, have been a boy. Nevertheless the thing somehow came to the knowledge of the public in the sense that it was suspected, though no one knew for a certainty whether it was true or not, that such an accident had taken place, and with the usual wickedness of humanity, it was rumoured that the Sovereign had had reasons to hide the condition she found herself in, and that the accident in itself had been brought on more voluntarily than accidentally. I was one day asked whether these sayings which circulated freely in St. Petersburg were true or not. Imagine my indignation and anger on hearing my beloved mistress accused of so terrible a thing, the accusation having not the slightest foundation to justify it. When later on my Imperial mistress began to honour me with her confidence, I implored her whenever she thought she had reasons to suppose that she was about to become again a mother, to mention the fact at once, and give it as much publicity as possible. But she was so persistently pursued by bad luck that this also proved later on a source of much trouble to her, when she happened to be attacked by an illness which was at first attributed to a condition that in reality did not exist. [Illustration: _Paul Thompson_ OLD BANQUET HALL OF THE CZARS]