The Czar had been surrounded by traitors, therefore he had not even been apprised of all that was taking place in Petrograd. Two urgent telegrams which were despatched to him by the President of the Duma, Mr. Rodzianko, never reached him, as we heard later on. Had he received them it is likely he would have hastened back, and perhaps his presence in the capital might have averted the catastrophe. But his attendants were mostly won over to the cause of the Revolution and purposely left him in ignorance of the gravity of the events which were taking place, until it was too late. The Empress also was not informed of the extent of the revolt, and it was through an indiscretion of one of her servants that she got at last an inkling of the truth. She sent for Count Benckendorff, the head of the household, and asked him to get her all the information possible concerning the extent of the rebellion. The Count, who throughout this sad story behaved with the greatest loyalty to the cause of the sovereigns whose confidence he had won by his long and faithful services, tried to go to Petrograd, where he hoped to learn some details as to what had taken place during the two preceding days, but found it impossible because the railway line was already in the hands of the revolutionaries, and no train from Czarskoi Selo was allowed to proceed. He had perforce to content himself with the news which he could obtain by telephone, and soon this means of communicating with the people likely to keep him informed as to what was going on was stopped. The Empress, almost mad with anxiety, walked to and fro in her apartments, wringing her hands, and saying the whole time that she knew the Czar had been killed and the news was being kept from her. It was with the greatest difficulty that she could be prevailed upon to send a telegram to General Roussky, who was then supposed to be loyal, enquiring after the Emperor. In about two hours she received a reply saying that Nicholas II. was on his way to Pskoff and expected to arrive there that same night. This somewhat allayed the anxieties of the Empress, and just about then the condition of the Grand Duchess Olga, who had taken the measles in a more serious form than her sisters, became suddenly worse, and she was thought to be in danger, as pneumonia had declared itself and complicated her condition. And then Alexis, who had been removed to another wing of the palace in the hopes that he might escape the contagion, sickened in his turn, so that the unfortunate Czarina had another anxiety to fight, which after all was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to her, because the necessity of attending to her children prevented her from brooding on what was happening to her husband, which otherwise she would have done the whole of the time.