family, who would have liked her to leave the Empress. There was also another personage in the household who held there quite a privileged situation; this was Mademoiselle Schneider, whose duties consisted in reading to the Czarina, and who was the only attendant she had brought over with her from Darmstadt. Mademoiselle Schneider could enter the apartments of her mistress whenever she liked. She was the medium through whom Alexandra Feodorovna communicated with her relatives in Germany, to whom she always felt afraid to write by post, and she was also the one and only person with whom the Empress spoke German. We all liked her, because she was a quiet, unassuming person; but I shall not take it upon myself to say whether or not she gave to the German government information it would have been better to have withheld. Then again there was a private secretary, whose business it was to attend to the correspondence of the Empress, and who used to make reports to her every morning. The post was first filled by Count Lamsdorff, then by Count Rostavtsoff, and neither of these gentlemen was quite up to the task. They did not know how to interest the Czarina in their work, which they accomplished in a methodical manner devoid of any initiative. Among their duties was the administration of Alexandra’s private purse and the control of her charities until the time when she assumed it herself at the period of the Japanese war. It was part of the privileges of the private secretary to pay out the bills of the Empress or at least to give out their amount to the head maid, that is, to myself. Count Lamsdorff paid whatever I asked, without the slightest demur, but his successor used to ask for explanations, and to make his comments, which sometimes was most annoying. The private accounts of the Czarina were settled on the 22nd day of every month, when the expenses of the thirty preceding days had to be balanced and adjusted. She was most particular about this, and hated being in debt to any one. But at the same time she absolutely ignored the meaning of the word economy, bought and ordered whatever she liked without a thought as to how her expenses were to be met, and more than once I have had to appeal, unknown to her, to the Czar, and to ask him to give orders to settle his wife’s bills without her being worried about the matter.