unable to communicate with the Czar since the previous evening.
The day of the 15th passed in an oppressive suspense. At 3.30 a.m. next morning Dr. Botkin was called to the telephone by a member of the Provisional Government, who asked him for news of Alexis Nicolaïevitch. (We heard subsequently that a report of his death had been circulating in the city.)
The Czarina’s ordeal was continued the next day. It was three days since she had had any news of the Czar and her forced inaction made her anguish all the more poignant.[59]
Towards the end of the afternoon the news of the Czar’s abdication reached the palace. The Czarina refused to believe it, asserting it was a canard. But soon afterwards the Grand Duke Paul arrived to confirm it. She still refused to believe it, and it was only after hearing all the details he gave her that Her Majesty yielded to the evidence. The Czar had abdicated at Pskoff the previous evening in favour of his brother, the Grand Duke Michael.
The Czarina’s despair almost defied imagination, but her great courage did not desert her. I saw her in Alexis Nicolaïevitch’s room that same evening. Her face was terrible to see, but, with a strength of will which was almost superhuman, she had forced herself to come to the children’s rooms as usual so that the young invalids, who knew nothing of what had happened since the Czar had left for G.H.Q., should suspect nothing.
Late at night we heard that the Grand Duke Michael had renounced the throne, and that the fate of Russia was to be settled by the Constituent Assembly.
Next morning I found the Czarina in Alexis Nicolaïevitch’s room. She was calm, but very pale. She looked very much thinner and ever so much older in the last few days.
In the afternoon Her Majesty received a telegram from the Czar in which he tried to calm her fears, and told her that he was at Mohileff pending the imminent arrival of the Dowager Empress.
Three days passed. At half-past ten on the morning of the 21st Her Majesty summoned me and told me that General Korniloff had been sent by the Provisional Government to inform her that the Czar and herself were under arrest and that all those who did not wish to be kept in close confinement must leave the palace before four o’clock. I replied that I had decided to stay with them.