In a certain sense she was right, because it was unfortunately an undoubted fact that the Empress had become quite fanatical in her allegiance to the Greek Orthodox Church, and that she tried to induce her daughters to follow her example. Happily for them the girls had a great deal of common sense, and they managed to keep themselves free from the religious excesses into which their mother had fallen. They loved her tenderly, and would have given their life for her, and she on her side doted on these girls. When they were babies she spent most of her spare time with them in their nursery or schoolroom, and later on she shared with them all her occupations and associated them with her life as much as she could. She never parted from them or from their brother, and there was not a thing which concerned their well-being, down to the smallest details, into which she did not enter. When the war broke out she with her two eldest daughters followed a course of training as sisters of charity, and in the hospital which she opened in Czarskoi Selo she nursed the wounded soldiers with them. In regard to the little boy whose advent had been such a source of joy to his parents, the Empress was also full of solicitude. She had taken upon herself his religious training, and every morning had him brought to her room for an hour, when she would read to him the gospel and teach him the catechism. She was a fond, but by no means a foolish mother, and what she aspired after was to make out of her children honest men and women and worthy members of society. But at the same time she had very determined opinions in the matter of education, and there were things which she could not understand, as, for instance, the necessity for her girls to have some amusements in their lives. She imagined that it was quite enough for them to live with their parents, in possession of all that their hearts could desire in the matter of material satisfactions, and would not hear of the necessity of marriage for them. She could not bring herself to look upon them as upon grown-up women, and considered them always in the light of babies in need of her care. She is not the only mother who may be reproached for this failing, and she was more reproached for it than she deserved to be. [Illustration: _International Film Service_ THE EX-CZARINA AND HER SON]