Unfortunately things turned out quite differently. Alexandra Feodorovna declared that she considered it her duty to go on doing exactly what her dead and gone friend had advised her to do, and the partisans of a separate peace with Germany found in her a more solid protection than the one they had enjoyed before. She pursued unmercifully all those who had tried to open the eyes of the Emperor, and the first thing she did, after having seen the Grand Duke Dmitry sent to Persia and Prince Youssoupoff exiled, was to cause the Czar to write to the Grand Duke Nicholas Michaylovitsch, who had addressed to him the letter which had incensed her so terribly, and command him to leave Petrograd and repair for two months to an estate which he owned in the South of Russia, in the government of Kherson. This order was brought to the Grand Duke by an Imperial messenger, on the last day of the year 1916, at half past eleven o’clock at night. It was written entirely in the Emperor’s hand, and was couched in the following terms: “I command you to start at once for Grouchevka, and to remain there two months. Nicholas.” But there was added a postscript that had been probably written without the Empress’s knowledge, under the vague feeling of remorse for such an unjustifiable action, and which said: “I beg you to do what I ask you.” Other Grand Dukes attempted in their turn to shake the influence of Alexandra Feodorovna, and to point out to the Czar the peril which it represented for the dynasty. Many angry scenes took place at Tsarskoie Selo, between them and the master of this Imperial place, but they all led to nothing, and when the wife of the Grand Duke Cyril, the Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna, sought the Sovereign on her own initiative, and tried to make him realise the great unpopularity of his consort, Nicholas II. interrupted her with the exclamation: “What has Alice got to do with politics? She is only a sister of mercy, and nothing else. And in regard to her so-called unpopularity, what you say is not exact.”