Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/141

Rh brother immediately gave the command to fire. But not one of the soldiers dared to obey. Thereupon my brother pulled out his pistol and shot the Tsar. There followed a disordered fusilade, after which only the Empress remained alive. Mortally wounded, she lifted herself from the floor, caught hold of a pillow from the bed, and, hiding behind it, burst into a terrible scream. The only Russian soldier among the Letts and Magyars finished her off by driving his bayonet through the pillow into her bosom. At daybreak the bodies were cut to pieces, transported Into the woods, drenched with petrol and burnt"

This was the story related to me by the brother of Yurkovski, a member of the Yekaterinburg College of the "Cheka," and the murderer of the Imperial family.

It is amazing that in spite of such conclusive evidence of the death of the Romanovs, there still thrives in Monarchist circles the mystical belief that the last of the Tsars has been saved, that he still troubles his heart over the fate of his country, firmly believing in the conversion of his "beloved people," which meantime has concentrated all its energies upon the annihilation of civilisation and all moral values, of Holy Russia itself. The land of the Tsars has since a few years become a geographical expression, a no-man's land, peopled by a mob of anarchists who are destroying even the poor remnants of their intelligence, their culture, their title to the very name of Man.

No wonder that while the Socialist-emigrés, mu-