I kissed her, and said that I owed all my fortitude to her mother. She had set such an example of courage that it was impossible for me not to follow it.
When the Empress broke the news to the Tsarevitch, the following conversation took place:
“Shall I never go to G.H.Q. again with Papa?” asked the child.
“No, my darling—never again,” replied his mother.
“Shan’t I see my regiments and my soldiers?” he said anxiously.
“No ... I fear not.”
“Oh dear! And the yacht, and all my friends on board—shall we never go yachting any more?” He was almost on the verge of tears.
“No ... we shall never see the ‘Standart.’ ... It doesn’t belong to us now.”
The Empress and I took tea together, and she told me how glad she felt that the Garde Equipage had left their colours in the Palace. “I should be so sorry to think that the colours were in the possession of the Duma,” she remarked. At that moment we heard the sound of voices, and a noise of singing and shouting. The Empress sprang off the couch on which she was lying, and rushed across to the window. “Oh, Madame, don’t look, I implore you,” I said, fearing the worst. But she did not hear me. Then I saw her grow pale, and she fell back half fainting on the couch. The sailors were leaving the Palace with the colours!
The Grand Duchess Marie was seized with measles late that evening. Like her sister, Anastasie, she dreaded being ill. “Oh, I did so want to be up when Papa comes,” she kept on repeating, until high fever set in, and she lost consciousness ... her last comprehensible words being, “Lili, can’t you sleep with Mamma to-night?”