A REAL TRAGEDY QUEEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 81, 1 May 1909, Page 3

A REAL TRAGEDY QUEEN.

Xo other Royal lady in Europe lias ,K)iv claim to the title "A Queen of 'ears" than the Dowager Empress of lussia, and the -brightest moments of or life now are during her yearly visits o this eonntry as the guest of her siscv, Queen Alexandra (says Pearson's Veekh). She «as little more than a child when he became betrothed to the then T»are : itch, but before the marriage could ake place her liancee was stricken down rith a mortal illness, lie sulnmoued he l'rinee.<-« and his younger brother o liis bedside. "Marry her," he said to his brother, oining their hands. "It is my dying equesl. And you, my dearest, you, will c Empress of Russia all the same. Yout esliny will be accomplished.'' A few years after this marriage had aken place, her father-in-law, the Emleror Alexander If., was blown almost ,D pieces in the streets of St. Petersburg. This horrible tragedy brought home to her the daily, almost hourly, rtanger in which 9be and her husband lived. She resolved, therefore, never to allow her husband to appear in public il she could possibly help it without being herself at his side. She felt that her best way of shielding him from assassination was to give hiui the protection of her presence. And, indeed, she is regarded with I superstitious reverence by the Russians. 'Many of the poorer classes are firmly convinced that she is surrounded by a host of guardian angels, and she has been spoken of as "The Bomb-proof Empress." At her coronation tears and laughter : were curiously mingled. j When she had had the crown placed i on her head, the Emperor, unable to l'o- . strain his emotion, raised her from the cushion on which she knelt and prcHscd her to his heart. Count Pahleii; the Urand Master of Ceremonies, was horrified. He hurried towards the imperial pair with an agonised cry; '■Sire, Sire, that is not in the ceremonial!" The Emperor's nerves had been so shattered and liis health so undermined by the shock of his father's assassination that his reign was practically a | slow death. The unhappy Empress was in despair. Hoping that a change of air might do good, she hurried her husband off to th e Palace at Livadia, in the [ Crimea. I At the .same time arrangements were I hastened for the betrothal of the still unmarried Tsarevitch Nicholas. The I Princess Alix of Hesse was chosen as I the future Empress, and a few days i after the dying Emperor had received . her he breathed his last, and the brave ■ Empress was a widow. j The next great horror that engulfed j her took place at the coronation of her son. the .present Emperor Nicholas. An imperial dole of food was to be distributed amongst the poorer classes of Moscow, where the coronation took place. Eager crowds began to assemble previous night on the Khodinsky Plain. By the next morning the crowd* I had assumed enormous proportions, and through the broken ground and the faulty arrangements they, became uncontrollable, and a great' panic ensued. Nearly fifteen hundred people were crushed to death and many hundreds , were injured. The Dowager Empress, as she had now become, hurried from the coronation 1 festivities and went r ound the different | hospitals to relieve, by her charity and I gentleness, the sufferings of th e victims of this awful calamity. I On the same evening a nuicli-tnlked-of ball took place at the French Embassy, and, instead oi requesting that it shouid be postponed, the new Emperor and Empress attended in full state. This callous indifference made them very unpopular, while the tender care the Dowager Empress took of the survivors produced upon the Russian nation . a great impression. .- 'She has now no fears for herself, but few can know the agonies she suffers on account of her son and his wife and j their children.