their presence. And that was the reason why the august family did not realise the danger of their position. The czar loved Russia and more than once I heard him express his fear of being taken abroad. He did not understand art, but liked nature and hunting extremely. It was painful for him to abstain from hunting for any length of time, and he disliked to have to spend his time indoors. A weak character was his fault and therefore he was influenced by his wife. I noticed that even in trifles, when he was consulted on some details, the usual answer was: “As my Wife wishes. I will ask her.” The empress was very clever, extremely reserved and had a strong character, and her main feature was her love of power. Her looks were majestic. When you spoke to the emperor there were moments when you forgot you were speaking to the czar, but when you spoke to the empress the feeling that she belonged to a royal family did not leave you for a moment. Owing to her character she always took the leading part in all family affairs, and subdued the emperor to her opinion. Certainly she felt more keenly than he did their humiliating position. Everybody noticed how rapidly she was aging. She spoke and wrote Russian very correctly and loved Russia very much. She feared, as the emperor did, to be taken abroad. She had a talent for painting and embroidery. Not only was the German in her unnoticeable, but you might have thought that she was born in a country opposed to Germany. This was explained by her education. After her mother’s death, being still very young, she was educated in England by her grandmother, Queen Victoria. I never heard a single German word from her. She used to speak Russian, English and French. There was no doubt of her illness. Dr. Botkin explained to me the nature of it. Being the daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse, it was something that she inherited from that family--weakness of the blood vessels. This malady produced paralysis following a bruise, from which the czarevitch was suffering. The men got rid of this illness after arriving at maturity, when this trouble entirely disappeared. With women the illness only started after their climacteric and from this stage hysteria was progressive. It was clear that the empress was suffering from hysteria. Botkin explained to me that this was the origin of her religious ecstasy. All her manual activities and all her thoughts were led by religious motives, and there was a touch of religion in her work. When she was making a present to anybody it always bore the inscription: “God bless you and protect you,” or something similar to that. There is no doubt that she loved her husband, but she loved him not in the way a woman loves a man, but as the father of her children. She loved all her children, but her son she adored.