There is one incident concerning these momentous days which I must relate. When the population of St. Petersburg, headed by the notorious Gapone, repaired to the Winter Palace and asked to see the Sovereign, in order to lay their grievances before him, the Czarina was of the opinion that he ought to have received them and spoken with them. Her mother-in-law thought the same thing. But the ministers, and especially Count, then still Baron, Fredericks opposed it, and it was their advice which prevailed, instead of that of the two Empresses. To tell the truth, Nicholas was not of a courageous nature, and but too ready to listen to those who told him that he ought not to expose his person to any danger. But in presence of this new load of calamity that threatened her and her children my mistress more than ever put her trust in God, and prayed, prayed with more fervour than she had ever done before. Several times she interceded in favour of revolutionaries who had been sentenced to death for some political crime or other. This happened particularly in the case of a woman, Sophy Konoplianinova, who had murdered General Minn, the commander of the Semenovsky regiment, who had repressed with ruthless cruelty the Moscow Rebellion. The Empress wished to have her pardoned, but the Czar would not listen to her, and all her pleadings for mercy were in vain. Is it to be wondered that racked as she was with cruel anxieties, and bred in an atmosphere of superstition, she set her belief more than ever in spiritism and consulted fortunetellers, and monks and priests who predicted to her a future devoid of cares, and one where worries would be unknown to her? She listened to them, and with a blind faith in their many and varied predictions she proceeded to absorb herself more and more in practices of a religious devotion which finally mastered all her thoughts and left no room in them for anything else. She had fitted up in her bedroom an oratory full of sacred images, to which every day was added another icon. No Russian was ever a firmer believer in the different dogmas of the Orthodox Church than was this daughter of a German house, whose mother had been an intimate friend of the famous Strauss, and had allowed the latter to dedicate to her his life of Jesus which had caused such a profound sensation in literary, religious and philosophical circles all over the world.