The Empress’s boudoir, known as “Le Cabinet Mauve de l’Imperatrice,” was a lovely room, in which the Empress’s partiality for all shades of mauve was apparent. In spring-time and winter the air was fragrant with masses of lilac and lilies of the valley, which were sent daily from the Riviera. Lovely pictures adorned the walls--and one of the Annunciation, and another of St. Cecilia, faced a portrait of the Empress’s mother, the late Princess Alice of England, Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt. The furniture was mauve and white, Heppelwaite in style, and there were various “cosy corners.” On a large table stood many family photographs, that of Queen Victoria occupying the place of honour. The other private drawing-room was a large room, decorated and upholstered in shades of green, and the Empress had arranged in one corner a sort of tiny staircase and a balcony, which was always full of violets in the spring. In this room were pictures of herself and the Emperor, and some exquisite miniatures of the Grand Duchesses by Kaulbach, that of Marie being especially beautiful. Books were everywhere; the Empress was a prolific reader, but she was chiefly addicted to serious literature, and she knew the Bible from cover to cover. The library was next the green drawing-room, and here all the newest books and magazines were placed on a round table, and constantly changed for others in the order of their publication. The Empress was a great letter-writer, and she wrote her letters wherever she fancied. Her writing-table proper was in the room next her bedroom, but I have often seen her writing letters on a pad in her lap, and she invariably used a fountain-pen. Before the war she wrote daily to a great friend in Germany, and she always read this lady’s letters to me. Her stationery, like her lingerie, was plain, but stamped with her cypher and the Imperial Crown. Apropos of her fondness for lilac and lilies of the valley, I may mention that the Empress loved all flowers, her especial favourites being lilies, magnolias, wistaria, rhododendrons, freesias and violets. A love of flowers is usually akin to a love of perfumes, and the Empress was no exception to the rule. She generally used Atkinson’s White Rose; it was, she said, “clean” as a perfume, and “infinitely sweet”--as an eau-de-toilette, she favoured Verveine. When I first knew the Empress, she did not smoke, but during the Revolution she smoked cigarettes: I fancy they soothed her overwrought nerves. The Empress always kept a diary, but I shall presently relate how it became my duty to burn her diaries, also those of Princess Sofia Orbeliani and Anna Virouboff; and last, but not least in sentimental interest, all the letters which the Emperor had sent her during their engagement and married life.