Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [98]
She did not force herself to read the manifesto until the following day. Then for the first time she heard his voice again. The telephone was working—he was calling from Headquarters. She spoke tender words of encouragement. Soon after the conversation a telegram was brought.
“Headquarters. 4 March, 10 o’clock in the morning. Your Highness [he called her that, as before, and would continue to call her that to the very end]. Thanks, my dear.… Despair is passing away. May God bless you all! Tender love.”
On the evening of March 4 she wrote him her last, 653rd letter:
“March 4th 1917. My dear, beloved Treasure! What a relief & joy to hear your dear voice, only it was very hard to hear, & anyway they listen to all our conversations now!—and your dear telegram today.… Baby has leaned across the bed & asks to send you a kiss. All 4 girls are lying in the green room in the darkness. Marie & I are writing, tho’ we can see almost nothing, since the curtains are lowered. Only this morning I read the manifesto.… People are beside themselves with despair, they adore my angel. Movement is beginning among the troops.… Ahead, I feel, I foresee the sun shining. I am extremely angry with Ducky’s husband….
“People are being arrested right & left now, officers naturally. God knows what is going on: the riflemen are choosing their own commanders & acting abominably to them—show no respect, smoke right in the officers’ faces. I do not want to write all that is going on—so repulsive. The sick upstairs & down do not know your decision, I am afraid to tell them, & for the time being no need.… God! Of course He will repay you a hundredfold for all your sufferings. My beloved, angel dear, I am afraid thinking what you are enduring, am going mad. I must not write of this more, I cannot! How they humiliated you, sending those two swine! I didnt know who that was until you told me. I feel the army will rise up.”
The novel in letters had come to an end. Captivity commenced.
He had spoken briefly of the abdication in that first telephone conversation. She would learn the details upon his return.
“CAUGHT LIKE A MOUSE IN A TRAP”
On the night of February 28 he was on the train to Tsarskoe Selo.
Nicholas’s diary:
“1 March, Wednesday. Last night … turned back because Lyuban and Tosno have been taken by the rebels and went to Valdai, Dno, and Pskov, where the train stopped for the night.”
When he awoke in Pskov the next morning, he learned that there was nowhere for him to go.
“Gatchina and Luga have been taken too. The shame and disgrace! We could not get to Tsarskoe, but my thoughts and feelings are there always. So distressing for poor Alix to endure all these events alone! Help us, Lord.”
Gatchina was his childhood, the garden where at the beginning of his life they built bonfires … their constant, unshakable world. And now….
“2 March. Thursday. This morning Ruzsky [commander of the northwestern and northern fronts] came and related his very long telephone conversation with Rodzianko. According to him, the situation in Petrograd is such that now the Duma ministry will be powerless to do anything since they are being opposed by the Social Democratic Party in the guise of the workers’ committee [the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies]. My abdication is necessary.”
Everything did occur very quickly. As sometimes happens, though, once he had what he had decided on in a moment of weakness and exhaustion, he did not want it anymore. He cursed his weakness and detested his helplessness and the entire horror that would not pass: Alix, alone with their sick children, and he himself locked in a train at the Dno station! (Such was its name, Dno, or “Bottom.”) He declared to Ruzsky that he was prepared to sign the abdication, but first all the commanders