Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/90

 CHAPTER VII

HILE I was at Michaelovka the Revolution was gaining ground every day. Russia was going through a critical period of her history and one felt as though one was living on a volcano—yet, in the end, an approximative degree of order came out of what looked like being chaos.

An attempt against the Tzar's life was really to be feared, and during a certain time the railway line from Peterhof to Petrograd by which he often travelled had a military guard, a close cordon of troops being placed below the embankment on which the train passed, on both sides of the track. A bomb there would have done important work as these trains were always conveying Ministers and Grand Dukes.

After dinner we often went to listen to "La Musique Rouge," the Emperor's private band; the musicians were dressed in red, each one of them being an artist. They played in the park at Peterhof, to which we drove in a large open landau and took our place in the long line of carriages there to meet numbers of friends. These concerts, however, were soon after discontinued on account of the growing troubles.

The Empress-Dowager often came over from