abdication to the Delegates sent by the Duma to require it from him. The unfortunate Monarch returned to Mohilew from Pskov on the 17th of March. On the next day arrived there by special train his mother, the Dowager Empress Marie, who, upon hearing of the misfortunes that had befallen her son, had hastened to his side. Their relations had been more than strained for a long time, thanks to the intrigues of the Empress Alexandra, but in those moments of agony the mother’s heart forgot aught else save that her child was in trouble, and she rushed to him to try at least to help him by her presence to bear it. Nicholas II. felt the nobility of this conduct, and the few days which he spent with Marie Feodorovna did away with much of the bitterness that had presided at their intercourse with each other for some time. But what they must have been for the widowed Empress it would be hardly possible to imagine. She understood but too well, if he did not, the perils which awaited her son in the future, and the contrast which his reign had presented with that of his father must have filled her soul with agony and distress. Fate proved itself indeed hard for this noble woman, because it inflicted upon her that last, supreme sorrow, of seeing, before her train carried her back to this town of Kieff which she had made her home for the last two years, Nicholas II. taken away a captive to that palace that was to know him no longer for its master. If one is to believe all that one hears, it seems that it was General Alexieieff, together with General Roussky and a few socialist leaders, who insisted on the provisional government ordering the arrest of the former Czar and of his Consort. They represented to Mr. Miliukoff and to his colleagues, that it would be the height of imprudence to allow the Empress to remain at liberty and able to go on intriguing, as was her wont, against the new administration. On the other hand sending the Imperial family immediately abroad had also its inconveniences, because their presence in Denmark or in England would only have been a cause of embarrassment to the Allies. Then again, the hatred of the population of Petrograd for Alexandra Feodorovna had reached such immense proportions that it was feared it would give way to excesses against her, and even attempts to murder her, if some kind of satisfaction were not given to its incensed feelings in respect to a woman who was considered everywhere in the light of the worst of traitors. For this reason or for another, it is not quite clear, but most likely because of the representations made by Roussky and by Alexieieff, the Executive Committee of the Duma, which was then the highest authority in Russia, decided to arrest Nicholas II. together with his Consort.