We mingled our tears, and she stayed with me for some considerable time. It was a strange scene, but I wish that those who revile the memory of the Empress could have seen her then, and experienced the pity, love and understanding which were so essentially her prerogatives. She strengthened and consoled me as no other could have done, and her last words of comfort before she left me were: “Perhaps they’ll let us bring Titi from Petrograd to the Red Cross Hospital opposite the Palace, then you could always see him through one of the windows.”
CHAPTER V
The Tsarevitch was now almost well, and running about the Palace much as usual. I do not think he noticed many changes, the Revolution conveyed nothing to him except when he missed certain of his soldiers and his friends. He was still a happy, light-hearted child.
The Imperial Family had no presentiment of disaster for themselves, but they suffered untold agonies of mind over the fate of Russia. “Can you imagine what it means to the Emperor to know that he is cut off from active life?” said the Empress.
Soon after the episode of telephoning from the basement, Kotzebue went to Petrograd. I was anxious for his return, as he had promised to go and see Titi, and bring me the latest news from home. Days passed ... I became apprehensive, and made enquiries, only to be told that we should not see him again at Tsarkoe! I saw in this an omen of coming trouble, so I went at once to the Emperor and acquainted him with what I had heard. The Emperor and the Empress were watching some of the ladies-in-waiting who were walking in the Park, followed by sentinels; the Empress noticed my agitation.
“Why, Lili, whatever is the matter?” she enquired.
“Madame ... I hear that Kotzebue is to be replaced.”
The Emperor looked at me. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he remarked: “Well—it can’t be helped” and straightway changed the conversation ... possibly to calm our fears, or more probably to show how unaffected he was by the mandates of the Revolutionaries.
The long, monotonous days passed—we endured them alternately with the calmness of despair and with gratitude for their dullness. Once we witnessed a sight of horror. Hearing a sound of military music, and the tramp, tramp of many people, we went to the windows, and saw a funeral procession wending its way across the snow-covered Park. But this was no ordinary funeral; the dead were some of the soldiers who had been killed at Tsarkoe Selo on the first day of the Revolution. It was a red burial—the coffins were covered in scarlet, the mourners were dressed in scarlet, and scarlet flags waved everywhere. Seen in the distance the procession looked like a river of blood flowing slowly through the Park. Everything was red and white, and the superstitious might have inferred from this a presage of the innocent blood so soon to be outpoured ... since the snow was not whiter than the souls of the young and beautiful who are now safe in the keeping of a God of Justice, who most surely will repay!