In fact one coach collapsed under their weight. There were as many piled on the roofs of the coaches as inside them. A crowd of soldiers who had demobilized themselves, but kept their arms, filled the train. Our journey back to the Crimea took place under most unpleasant conditions. ![]() I brought back with me two Rembrandts, which were among the finest portraits in our picture gallery: "The Man in the Large Hat" and "The Woman with the Fan." Unframed and rolled up, the paintings were easy to carry. Petersburg with my brother-in-law Theodore, who insisted on coming with me. But, as our stay there threatened to be a long one, I thought I ought to see what was happening to our house on the Moika and also to the hospital in our house in Liteinaia Street. Life in the Crimea was peaceful enough until May. The local Soviet having given their approval, preparations were made for leaving at once, but it was not an easy matter to persuade the Empress to go. Fortunately the Government ordered all members of the Imperial family then in Kiev to leave the town. After the Emperor was arrested, the Empress Marie, who wanted to be as near her son as possible, stubbornly refused to leave Kiev. The Dowager Empress, accompanied by my father-in-law, her youngest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, and the latter's husband, Colonel Kulikovski, also arrived at AiTodor. Feeling extremely embarrassed, the poor boys did not know which way to look, but it all ended peaceably and the enthusiastic demonstrators went home singing the Marseillaise. His country, he said, had been a republic for three hundred years, everyone there was perfectly happy and he wished the same to the Russian people. Niquille, their Swiss tutor, took the children and their governesses out onto a balcony from which he harangued the crowd. My young brothers-in-law, who had remained at Ai-Todor, told us that when news of the Revolution reached the Crimea the inhabitants of the two neighboring villages came to congratulate them on the change of regime- singing the Marseillaise and waving red flags. The wave of revolution had not yet reached southern Russia, and the Crimea was comparatively safe. The Grand Duchess Ksenia and her three eldest sons, my parents and Irina and I, followed the general exodus. ![]() Petersburg and sought refuge in the Crimea. In the spring of 1917, many people left St. Rosanov, a Russian author who had escaped the general contagion and remained unbiased, describes in a play entitled The Revolution and the Intellectuals the predicament in which the liberals found themselves when faced with the triumph of the Soviets: "After witnessing an admirable performance of the Revolution with the keenest enjoyment, the intellectuals wanted to fetch their warm fur-lined overcoats and return to their fine comfortable homes but the coats had been stolen and the houses burned. Revolutionary ideas had spread to all classes, even to the well-to-do and to the people who bad always considered themselves conservatives.
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