Czarina, her influence proved quite mischievous, and might have become even dangerous if the strong common sense of the two eldest girls had not saved them from the danger of the superstitious atmosphere with which their aunt wanted to surround them. [Illustration: _International Film Service_ RASPUTIN] The Empress was the best and most tender of mothers. Indeed her affection for her children was almost too fervent, for she was always anxious on their account and would hardly ever allow them to mix with other people for fear of anything evil befalling them. She thought, quite naturally, that she could trust her sister and share with her the responsibilities of the education of her family. In reality she could not have made a worse choice, because between ambition and superstition the Grand Duchess Elizabeth was about the last person who ought to have been permitted free access to girls of the impressionable temperament of the young daughters of Nicholas II. CHAPTER VII THE CZARINA’S FAMILY RELATIONS The Empress, like all German Princesses, had been brought up in a family atmosphere which had a great deal of the bourgeois about it. Her father had been comparatively a poor man, and his household had been conducted on most modest lines, as can be seen from the letters of the Czarina’s mother, the Grand Duchess Alice of Hesse, addressed to her own mother, Queen Victoria. Neither pomp nor magnificence had presided over the rearing of the young Princesses left motherless so soon, and it was only at Windsor and at Balmoral that Princess Alix had seen what a Sovereign’s existence meant. But on the other hand she had been very happy with her sisters and with her brother to whom she was particularly attached. For some years after their father’s death she had been practically the mistress of his household, and she had felt bitterly his marriage with their cousin, the Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg. The latter, whose mother was a Russian Grand Duchess, had, in her own way, just as imperious a character as her sister-in-law, and soon relations between the two girls became more than strained. As is well known, the marriage of the Grand Duke of Hesse turned out a most unhappy one and ended with a divorce in which the Princess Alix sided with her brother, and allowed the latter’s wife to see that such was the case. This brought about a family quarrel, which was further accentuated by the re-marriage of Victoria Melita with her other cousin, the Grand Duke Cyril of Russia, which incensed the Empress to such a degree that she used all her influence over the Czar to persuade the latter to exile Cyril and his bride, and to deprive them of their fortune and rank at the Russian Court. This was a most unfortunate action, because it roused against the Czarina the wrath of all her relatives, who already did not like her, and who in consequence went over to swell the ranks of her enemies, alas, already too numerous.