She was accused of being sarcastic and of making fun of old people whom age and past service ought to have preserved from the ridicule she was supposed to shower upon them. Then, again, the Czarina had the imprudence to express in public her disgust at what she called the loose manners of St. Petersburg society. She tried to become acquainted with all the gossip going about town, and declared that she was going to reform the morals of her empire, proceeding by striking off the list of invitations for a Court ball the names of all the women supposed rightly or wrongly to have had a flirtation of some kind. The result was that hardly any ladies appeared at this particular ball, with the exception of mothers with girls to bring out, and the whole of St. Petersburg rose up in arms against its Empress. It was decided to boycott her, which was done, and the Empress Mother was asked to interfere and to explain to her daughter-in-law that it was not her business to brand with any kind of stigma the names of ladies in regard to whom no open scandal had ever taken place. The incident assumed such proportions that the Czar was asked to interfere, and he decided that in future the list of invitations for Court festivities was to be submitted to his mother and not to his wife, who was still too great a stranger in Russia to know who ought or ought not to be invited to the Winter Palace. As may be imagined, the little incident I have just narrated did not tend to improve the relations between the young Czarina and the Dowager, and the former’s popularity suffered from it to a considerable extent. On the New Year following upon this memorable tempest in a tea-cup, St. Petersburg ladies made up their minds not to put in an appearance at the great reception which followed upon divine service in the Winter Palace, a reception during which Court society offered its New Year’s wishes to the sovereigns. So about four of them, who by virtue of the official position of their husbands could not absent themselves, were the only ones who attended the function. This absence, _en masse_, could not but be noticed, and of course the Czarina was offended. But she was powerless to retort otherwise than passively, which she did by avoiding in the future showing herself in public, also by discontinuing her audiences and even the ball which had been considered as an indispensable feature of every winter season in the Russian capital. This manner of manifesting her displeasure only added to the bitterness of the feelings which she had inspired, as was to be expected, and soon fashionable ladies deserted St. Petersburg for the Riviera or Paris, where they felt happier and more at their ease than in their own country. One after another the big houses, which used to rival the Court itself by the splendour of their entertainments, closed their doors, and the “Palmyra of the North,” as the capital of the Czars used to be called, became one of the dullest cities in the whole world.