The delegates looked at each other, and Schoulguine remarked that they were not prepared for this complication, and that he begged permission to consult with his colleague. But after a short conversation they gave up the point, as Goutschkoff remarked that he did not think they had the right to mix themselves up in a matter where paternal feelings and affection came into question, and that besides a regency had also much to say against it, and was likely to lead to complications. The Emperor seemed satisfied that the delegates had conceded the point, and then he asked them whether they could undertake to guarantee that his abdication would pacify the country and not lead to any disturbances. They declared that they could do so. Upon this he got up and passed into another compartment of his railway carriage. In about half an hour he returned, holding in his hand a folded paper, which he handed over to Goutschkoff, saying as he did so: “Here is my abdication, will you read it?” After which he shook hands with the delegates and retired as if nothing unusual had happened, perhaps not realising that with one stroke of his pen he had changed not only his own life, but the course of Russian history, and, in a certain sense, destroyed the work of his glorious ancestor, Peter the Great. It is difficult here not to make some remark on the part played by General Roussky in this tragedy which without his interference would probably have taken a different course. It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that the unfortunate Czar whom he induced to abdicate, might have found better and more faithful servants than the people who forsook him in the hour of his peril. Very probably Roussky believed that he was acting in the interests of his country, which in a sense he was also doing, because something had to be attempted in order to stop the nefarious work of Alexandra Feodorovna, and it is certain that her husband would never willingly have consented to be parted from her. Killing a woman would have been disgracing oneself, together with the Revolution which had been accomplished under such exceptional circumstances; but still one would have preferred that the man who was instrumental in the destruction of the Romanoff dynasty should not have been one who wore on his epaulettes the initials of the Sovereign he was helping to dethrone. One would have liked him to feel some pity for the master whose hand he had kissed a few days before he presented to him the pen with which he ordered him to sign his own degradation. In spite of the impassibility preserved by Nicholas II. during the last hours of his reign, it is likely that the tragedy which took place at Pskov must have been one of the most poignant that has ever assailed a Sovereign, who, after having reigned for twenty-two years, found himself, in the course of a few hours, reduced to utter powerlessness and compelled to give up of his own accord the crown which his father