In Czarskoi Selo she had a lovely room full of flowers where she had her writing table, a wonderful specimen of French art of the time of Louis XV. Next to it stood a smaller table, where she used to throw the sheets she had just finished writing upon, until all her letters were finished, when she would pick them up and put them in their envelopes. This led her sometimes to mix up one letter with another, and brought her into trouble through people getting missives which were not meant for them. While Queen Victoria was alive the Empress wrote to her regularly every week, but she did not much care for so doing, and used to say that it was a duty she would rather not have had imposed upon her. At Christmas and the New Year, she regularly sent her best wishes to the other European sovereigns whom she knew personally. In this room I have just described, which was hung up with light and bright chintz, reminding one of an English room, and which contained comfortable and at the same time costly furniture, the Empress transacted only her private correspondence. All her official writing was done in a small library opening out of her sitting-room, where stood a large, ugly and practical writing table with innumerable pigeonholes, at which she used to sit when her private secretary presented to her his daily reports. It was at this table she made up her accounts and attended to all her business, and it was also here that she made out the programme for her public work, receptions, visits to charitable institutions, and so forth. She was most orderly and neat in her habits, and could tell at once where she had put such or such a paper. I do not think that she could have tolerated disorder in any shape or form around her, and she used to go through her numerous drawers and wardrobes every month, when she expected to find every single thing in the place where she had ordered it to be put. All her laces, of which she had a wonderful collection, were kept in a separate cupboard, of which I was the only person to have a key. The Empress herself possessed a duplicate one, as she did of all her trunks, wardrobes, and cupboards, and she clung to them like a real German housewife, and sometimes would unexpectedly open one or the other of these receptacles to assure herself that they were kept in order. I remember an amusing instance of this mania. When the Empress married, she received among her wedding presents a beautiful writing table set in crystal and gold with her monogram and the Russian Eagle on the top of the inkstand. For some years she always used it, until at last one day the Emperor noticed that there was some inaccuracy in the coat of arms of the Romanoffs which was ornamenting the blotting book, and he instantly presented his wife with another and far handsomer writing table set, a masterpiece of the skill of Faberge, the great Court jeweller in St. Petersburg, which was made out of platinum and crystal, with big turquoises as ornaments.