But when she was in good health, the Czarina gave up every minute of her time to her family. She took upon herself the religious instruction of her son and daughters, and she tried to rear them in the strong principles which she herself professed. Both the Czar and herself observed with extreme punctuality the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church. During the whole six weeks of Lent, no meat appeared on the Imperial table, and at festivals as well as on Sundays, the whole family attended all the morning and afternoon services which were celebrated in the chapel of the Palace. Afterwards the Empress built a church in Czarskoi Selo, which became one of the most beautiful shrines in the whole of Russia, and she regularly went to it, forsaking the private chapel of her own residence. She had arranged for herself an oratory in one corner of the building, from which she could, unseen herself, follow the religious services. This eccentricity, which proceeded from the fact that the Czarina did not care to be the object of the attention of the congregation, was also made the cause of violent and unseemly attacks upon her person and character. [Illustration: _International Film Service_ THE EX-CZARINA OF RUSSIA AND HER FOUR DAUGHTERS] When the state of her health allowed her to do so, Alexandra Feodorovna went for long walks in the park surrounding the Palace, with the Emperor and her children. She was inordinately fond of the open air, and was never so happy as in the Crimea, where she could indulge in her taste for it. There she spent hours arranging her rose garden and generally beautifying this lovely place, to which she hoped she would one day be able to retire. It is not generally known, but a fact, that both the Emperor and herself nursed the idea of abdicating in favour of their son as soon as the latter should be old enough to assume the government of the country, and of retiring to Livadia for the rest of their days. Neither Nicholas II. nor his Consort ever dreamt that this abdication would be imposed upon them by events the magnitude of which no one in the whole of Russia could have been able to foresee. Very few visitors ever came to enliven the solitude of Czarskoi Selo, but at Livadia the Empress would make a point of inviting to dinner and to small dances given for her daughters, all the people living in the neighbourhood, or staying in the various hotels on the Crimean coast, who had been presented to her. The officers of the Imperial yacht, the _Standard_, were also bidden to these parties, and they were almost the only persons with whom the Empress ever conversed freely. She was very fond of the sea, and during the cruises which she took every summer in the Finnish waters she grew to know by name all the crew of the vessel on which she found herself, and she took pleasure in talking with the officers and men, the former of whom were afterwards always welcomed by her wherever she was.