The new executive committee displayed considerable patriotism at this juncture. It might have provoked enormous enthusiasm in its favour had it revealed what it knew concerning the peace negotiations entered into by the Empress, but this might have given a pretext for explosions of wrath on the part of the mob, which could easily have ended in excesses, compromising the dignity of the Revolution. It therefore decided to keep back from the public its knowledge on this subject, and contented itself with arresting the ministers, and all the persons whom it suspected of having lent themselves to this intrigue, and it simply empowered two members of the Duma, Mr. Goutschkoff and Mr. Schoulguine, to proceed to Pskov, where it was known that the Emperor had arrived the day before, to ask the latter to abdicate in favour of his son. Nicholas II. in the meanwhile had arrived at headquarters which were then in Mohilev, and where no one seemed to know anything about what was going on in Petrograd. None of the people about him even suspected that a storm was brewing which would overturn in a few hours a power which they considered far too formidable for anything to be able to shake. The only person who was kept informed of the course which events were taking was the head of the Staff, General Alexieieff, who had been won over from the very first to the cause of the Revolution, and who, if one is to believe all that one hears, played all the time a double game. It was he who received all the telegrams addressed to the Emperor, and who communicated them to him. The latter at last was shaken out of his equanimity, and gave orders to prepare his train to return to Tsarskoie Selo. He took this decision in consequence of a message from the commander of the Palace, addressed to General Voyeikoff the head of the Okhrana, where the latter was advised that the presence of the Sovereign was necessary, because the troops of the garrison in the Imperial residence had mutineed, and the safety of the Empress and of her children was endangered. But in spite of the orders given to press the departure of the Imperial train it somehow could not be got ready as quickly as was generally the case, so that it was only during the night from the 12th to the 13th of March, that it started at last. It went the usual route as far as the station of Lichoslav, where it was met with the news that a revolutionary government had been formed at Petrograd which had seized the railway lines and appointed a deputy to take them in charge. Another telegram from the military station master of the Nicholas station in Petrograd instructed the officials at Lichoslav to send the Imperial train to Petrograd, and not to Tsarskoie Selo. This was communicated to General Voyeikoff, who, however, gave directions not to heed this warning, but to proceed to Tsarskoie Selo, as had been arranged at first. At twelve o’clock at night the Imperial train reached Bologoie. There a railway official