There happened circumstances when the Empress interfered directly in the affairs of the State, and persuaded the Czar to do what she required of him; as, for instance, the exile in Siberia, this Siberia whither she was to be sent herself, and the arbitrary arrest of several leaders of the labour party, whom, under some futile pretext or other, the government threw into prison a few weeks before the outbreak of the Revolution, in spite of the indignant protestations made by the Duma on the subject. It was also Alexandra Feodorovna, who, on the advice of the metropolitan Pitirim, a creature of Rasputin, who had caused him to be appointed to the See of Petrograd, the most important one in the Empire, persuaded the Emperor to follow the advice of the minister Protopopoff to prorogue the Duma, and to arm the police with machine guns, in view of a possible revolt of the inhabitants of the capital against the government, a fatal and most imprudent measure, if there ever was one, which decided the fate of the Romanoff dynasty. In this last occurrence, it was less out of fear of the debates that might take place in the Duma, than because he wanted to have his hands untied in regard to the conclusion of peace for which he had been working ever since he had been called to the ministry of the interior, that Protopopoff induced his Sovereign to resort to a measure absolutely devoid of common sense, and the only effect of which could be to add fuel to a fire that had been smouldering for months, if not years. It proved fatal for everybody, and it is still a question whether it was not to be more fatal for Russia than anything else which Nicholas II. had ever done, because it has thrown her into an era of revolution and of trouble, for which she was neither prepared nor ripe. At that time I am writing about, the members of the Imperial family together with the aristocracy were beginning to get more and more alarmed at the manner in which events were unfolding themselves, and were wondering as to what could be done to put an end to the influence of the Empress and of her favourites. One of the oldest, and the only surviving personal friend of the late Czar Alexander III., Count Vorontzoff Dachkoff, when he visited the Emperor to take leave of him, on his resignation of the functions of Viceroy of the Caucasus, had tried to remonstrate with him on the subject, and to point out to him the necessity of getting rid of Rasputin and of the followers of the latter. He had known Nicholas II. as a child, and he could therefore talk with him more familiarly than any one else in Russia: “I must tell you the truth,” he said. “Do you know that, thanks to your Rasputin, you are going to your ruin and endangering the throne of your son?” The old soldier, who had served under four sovereigns, became quite eloquent in his speech. The Czar listened to him in silence, and at last exclaimed almost with a sob: “Why did God lay upon me such a heavy burden?”