and repeated to the Dowager Empress everything that her daughter-in-law was doing, a fact of which the latter became aware through remarks made to her by the elder lady, and the result was most disastrous. The arrival of the children, whose advent obliged Alexandra Feodorovna to set up a nursery, which she tried to model after those she had seen in England, did not improve conditions that already had become strained, because, as one daughter after another appeared, Marie Feodorovna grew to think that her daughter-in-law would never give an heir to the throne and to look up towards her second son Michael as the future Emperor. This was gall and wormwood to my mistress, who often lamented the fact, and, when she had taken me into her confidence, complained of the want of consideration with which her mother-in-law made her feel that she was a nobody and had not fulfilled the duty which was expected of her, that of providing future Emperors for Russia. Other reasons also contrived to add to this state of latent irritation which had established itself in the bosom of the Imperial family. There was the question of the crown jewels; of the order in which the names of the two Empresses were to be introduced into the church liturgy; and many others, small and great. The Dowager was far too tactful to complain about the domestic relations of her son, but she contrived to let people guess her sentiments on the subject, and took to spending more and more of her time in Denmark, which after all was perhaps the best thing she could have done. [Illustration: _International Film Service_ GRAND DUKE MICHAEL] The Japanese war, however, brought her back to Russia, and it was during its course that there happened the one great event in the life of Alexandra Feodorovna—the birth of her only son. Great were the rejoicings when this small boy made his appearance in a world which was not to prove too kind to him, as we all know. His advent, however, disturbed the equanimity of several people, whilst it raised the hopes of others. For one thing, the Grand Duke Michael, the only brother of the Czar, lost all the importance with which he had been endowed in the eyes of the public as the eventual heir to the Russian throne. It also took away some of that of his mother, who was supposed to exercise considerable control over him, and of course the feelings of the latter on the subject were very much mixed, because though on the one hand she could not but rejoice at seeing the succession secured in the direct line, yet, on the other hand, she had accustomed herself, as had many others, to the idea that her eldest son would never become father to a boy, and it required a certain time before she could get accustomed to the changes which the birth of the little Alexis had brought about.