At 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning we went downstairs to the Empress’s bedroom. She was awake, and as she opened the door she whispered: “Hush ... Marie is asleep: the train is late.... Most probably the Emperor won’t come until ten.” The Empress was fully dressed, and she looked so sad that I could not help saying impulsively: “Oh, Madame, why is the train late?”
She smiled wanly, but did not reply. As we went back to our bedroom, Anastasie said in agitated tones: “Lili, the train is never late. Oh, if Papa would only come quickly.... I’m beginning to feel ill. What shall I do if I get ill? I can’t be useful to Mamma.... Oh, Lili, say I’m not going to be ill.”
I tried to calm her, and I persuaded her to lie down on her bed and sleep; but the poor child was actually sickening for the measles. Anastasie was the sweetest-natured girl: she adored her mother, and delighted in running hither and thither on her errands. The Empress always alluded to Anastasie as “my legs!”
When the Empress joined me in Olga’s room a little before nine, she still hoped for the 10 o’clock train. “Perhaps the blizzard detains him,” she said. She lay down on the couch, and I sat on the floor beside her; we spoke in undertones; but her chief anxiety was concerning my want of sleep.
“Sit on a chair, Lili, and put your feet up on the couch,” she said.
“No—no—Madame,” I replied, “it is not to be thought of.” But, at her request, I compromised matters by resting the tips of my shoes on the end of the couch.
Ten o’clock came, but we still heard nothing. It was the first of March, a month fatal to the Romanoffs—well might they “beware the Ides of March!” The Emperor Paul was suffocated on the first of March, and, thirty-six years previously, on this date, the Emperor’s grandfather, Alexander II, was killed by a bomb. The March of 1917 is destined to be associated with the downfall of the dynasty.
We were living in a state of continual and unrelieved anxiety. Dr. Botkin and Dr. Direvenko were in constant attendance on the three Grand Duchesses, but the Tsarevitch was, fortunately, much better. Poor Anastasie could not reconcile herself to the idea of being ill: she cried and cried, and kept on repeating, “Please don’t keep me in bed.”
Service in the Palace was quite normal, but the water supply which worked the private lift used by the Empress had been cut off, and in consequence she was now obliged to walk upstairs. This sounds a trivial incident, but it entailed a great deal of suffering on the Empress, who was already overtired and overstrung. Her heart, always affected, now became much worse, owing to her having to go up and down stairs so often, but she insisted upon seeing her children, and she used to go up the staircase at times almost on the verge of fainting. I supported her—walking behind her and holding her underneath the arms.
We could not understand what had become of the Emperor: the Empress thought that the delay arose owing to the confusion on the railways, which were now in the hands of the Revolutionaries.