I remember one occasion when a deputation of peasants from one of the Governments of Central Russia came to bring presents to the Czarevitch. The three men of which it was composed, on an order given by Derevenko in a low voice, dropped on their knees before Alexis Nicolaïevitch to offer him what they had brought. I noticed that the boy was embarrassed and blushed violently, and when we were alone I asked him whether he liked seeing people on their knees before him. “Oh no, but Derevenko says it _must_ be so!” “That’s absurd!” I replied. “Even the Czar doesn’t like people to kneel before him. Why don’t you stop Derevenko insisting on it?” “I don’t know. I dare not.” I took the matter up with Derevenko, and the boy was delighted to be freed from this irksome formality. But a more serious element was his isolation and the circumstances under which his education was carried on. I realised that these were almost inevitable, and that the education of a prince tends to make him an incomplete being who finds himself outside life if only because he has not been subject to the common lot in his youth. Such teaching as he receives can only be artificial, tendencious, and dogmatic. It often has the absolute and uncompromising character of a catechism. There are several reasons: the restricted choice of teachers, the fact that their liberty of expression is limited by the conventions of their official life and their regard for the exalted position of their pupil, and, finally, that they have to get through a vast programme in a very few years. It inevitably means that they have to resort to mere formulæ. They proceed by assertion, and think less of rousing the spirit of enquiry and analysis and stimulating the faculty of comparison in their pupils than of avoiding everything which might awaken an untimely curiosity and a taste for unofficial lines of study. Further, a child brought up in such conditions is deprived of something which plays a vital part in the formation of judgment. He is deprived of the knowledge which is acquired out of the schoolroom, knowledge such as comes from life itself, unhampered contact with other children, the diverse and sometimes conflicting influences of environment, direct observation and simple experience of men and affairs--in a word, everything which in the course of years develops the critical faculty and a sense of reality. Under such circumstances an individual must be endowed with exceptional gifts to be able to see things as they are, think clearly, and desire the right things. He is cut off from life. He cannot imagine what is going on behind the wall on which false pictures are painted for his amusement or distraction.