The Empress was a great reader, but only of serious books, and scientific ones were her favourites. She did not care for history, which she frankly owned bored her, because she could not interest herself in the sayings and doings of people long dead. But science held her enthralled, and every work which was published in English, French and German on astronomy, mathematics, and natural history was perused by her with avidity. She admired immensely Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” and had one day a furious battle with her Father Confessor, who remonstrated with her for keeping such a dangerous work in her rooms. Astronomy was also one of her hobbies, and she expounded it to her children whenever she found an occasion or opportunity to do so. She embroidered wonderfully, and made some church ornaments which would easily have won a prize at any exhibition. But her great amusement was the drawing of caricatures which she executed with an incredible talent, having the knack of seizing the funny side of each thing or person she tried her pencil upon. This talent, however, caused her much annoyance, because the people whose ridiculous points she seized upon became aware of it and were deeply offended, as a matter of course, especially the members of the Imperial family, who, more than any others, had the misfortune to fall under her satirical pencil. [Illustration: _International Film Service_ GRAND DUCHESS OLGA] Had she been prudent enough not to show her sketches to friends it would not have been so bad, but she was, on the contrary, fond of exhibiting them, and did so without the least discrimination, with the result that she gained for herself the reputation of being an unkind and malicious woman, which was far from the case. The Empress tried to develop a love for music in her children, and greatly succeeded with her eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga, who had a really wonderful talent for the piano. She could compose wild, melodious airs, imbued with that Russian and Slav sadness which is latent in all Northern characters. I remember one day last May when, entering unexpectedly the apartment where the young Grand Duchesses were sitting, I was entranced by the playing of Olga, who seemed to put into her music all the agony and anxiety of her soul. Things were dark then. The possibility of seeing exchanged the prison of Czarskoi Selo for another was already looming on the horizon, and the young and blooming girl who was to be sent to the horrors and solitude of a terrible exile was giving vent to her feelings in the weird accents which she gave to the music with which she tried to ease her troubled feelings.