with all her other attendants, and with trembling hearts we awaited the verdict of the doctors as to her safety and the sex of the infant for whose advent we were watching with such intense interest. It was noon, and the great clock of the castle of Peterhof had just been heard striking the twelve strokes announcing it, when a child’s cry broke the silence of the room where the Empress was lying, and then Doctor Ott, her physician, turned towards the Czar, standing pale and worried beside his Consort, with the word: “I congratulate Your Majesty on the birth of a Czarevitsch.” Nicholas II. did not reply. He stood as if dazed by the unexpected news. No one spoke or interrupted his meditation, but all devoted themselves to the Empress, who was still under the effects of the chloroform that had been administered to her. When she opened her eyes she looked so weak that no one dared to tell her the good news, but she seemed to read it in the face of her husband, because she suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, it cannot be true; it cannot be true. Is it really a boy?” Nicholas II. fell on his knees beside her and burst into tears, the first and only ones I had ever seen him shed. [Illustration: _International Film Service_ THE EX-CZAREVITCH] The birth of an heir to the throne was an event of such magnitude that it absorbed for some time the whole attention of the public, and diverted it from all that was taking place in the Far East. For his parents it came as a consolation after long years of waiting, and seemed to have been destined to comfort them for the disasters which were taking place at the front. The Czar could not restrain his joy, and at every moment he used to speak of “his son,” and to look out for occasions to pronounce the magic words, “My Boy.” The Empress’s happiness was less buoyant but just as intense, perhaps even more so, for this opportune arrival of the little man whom one had already left off expecting improved considerably her own position, and gave her an importance which had been denied to her before. She became passionately attached to this child of promise, and almost painfully and morbidly devoted to him. Unfortunately he proved a most delicate little mortal, and for the first years that followed upon his birth the doctors who attended him hardly hoped they would be able to save his life. He was born with an organic disease, or rather defect, a weakness of the blood vessels which ruptured on the slightest provocation, causing hemorrhages that sometimes could not be stopped for hours. For a long time his condition was hidden from the public, but at last concealment became impossible, especially after an attack which occurred about two years before the great war, which was of so serious a nature that the child’s life was absolutely despaired of. A few months before this he had been obliged to undergo an operation for hernia and had hardly recovered from the effects of it when an accident brought about the