And she, this woman who alone stands responsible for all this ruin that has overtaken her consort, and his dynasty, did she ever understand the terrible responsibility that she had assumed? Did she ever try to be for her husband the faithful companion whom he required, and on whom he might have leant in the hour of danger and of peril? Did she attempt to develop in him those strong and virile qualities a sovereign conscious of his might requires to be able to handle it wisely? Did she ever enter into the needs of her people, or identify herself with the interests of the nation whose Empress she happened to be? Alas! Alas! history has already replied to those questions, and it is history which tells us that, thanks to Alexandra Feodorovna, the inheritance bequeathed by Peter the Great to his posterity has been squandered and lost. If there has ever existed a woman who has proved fatal to all those with whom her lot has been thrown, it is this little Hessian Princess, whom fate or chance associated with one of the greatest political crises of which Russian history will keep the record and the remembrance, and for whose tears no one will find any pity, even when her sorrows will need it most. CHAPTER III In one of her letters addressed to her daughter Marie Antoinette, the Empress Marie Therese wrote: “I am glad to hear that you have decided to re-establish the old etiquette and representation of Versailles. However tiresome it may be, its inconveniences are still far less than those which arise out of its absence. A Court must learn to know well its sovereigns.” These words of a woman who knew better than any other queen had ever known how to uphold the prestige of her crown, ought to have been remembered by the Czar Nicholas II., because it is an undoubted fact that the custom which was established during his reign to keep the Emperor and his family isolated from the nation over which he ruled, had a good deal to do with the change that established itself gradually in the ideas of the people, as well as in the minds of the aristocracy, in regard to the reigning house. One forgot that there existed in Russia an Emperor, and one only remembered the manifold abuses which were the consequence of the detestable government to which the nation was subjected. All the personal ties that might have bound the monarch with those who could in an emergency have defended him against danger, had been snapped asunder by that monarch himself. St. Petersburg, which formerly (I have now in mind only the upper classes) had converged towards the sun represented by the Imperial Palace and its inhabitants, learned how to do without it, and it was no longer considered to be an honour to have relations, no matter of what nature, with any member of the House of Romanoff. The Imperial Family, in imitation of the conduct pursued by its Chief, seemed as if it wished to efface itself and to lead the existence of common