What did Alexandra Feodorovna do during those solemn hours of a supreme crisis? I do not wish to be hard on her now that misfortune has overtaken her, but the truth must be told, and it is necessary to point out that her principal preoccupation during the months which preceded the Revolution consisted in defending Rasputin against the attacks directed against him from all sides, and in isolating the Emperor from all the people capable of enlightening him in regard to the conduct and the character of the sinister personage whom her imagination had transformed into a Saint, and to whose presence at her side she attributed a miraculous power, capable of protecting her and her family, against every kind of danger. Under his influence and thanks to the impulse which he gave to her activity, she applied herself to persuade the Czar to conclude a separate peace with Germany, working upon the humanitarian feelings of Nicholas II., and repeating constantly to him that he owed it to his subjects to put an end to a useless effusion of blood, and not to go on with a perfectly hopeless struggle. If the Revolution had not taken place it is most probable that a separate peace would have been signed between Russia and Germany during the course of the next few months, and it is also likely that if this intention of the Empress had not transpired outside the gates of her Palace the Revolution would not have broken out when it did, because all the different political parties in the Duma were agreed as to the advisability of putting it off so long as the enemy was in occupation of a part of the country. But Alexandra Feodorovna poured the last drops into a glass which was ready to overflow, and the hatred which the Russian nation bore her found at last its justification in the general opinion which suddenly exploded like a barrel of powder in the whole of the country, that she also was a traitor, who had been won over to the German cause, and who was ready to give up into the hands of the adversary against whom one had been fighting for so many long and anxious months of a struggle during which so much blood had flown, this Russia that had offered her the Imperial diadem, which she had found nothing better to do than to sully with the mud of the dirty roads whither her steps had taken her.