the ex-emperor.
The four were received with a popular demonstration of enthusiasm,
which contrasted sharply with the coldness with which Nicholas had
been received. Nicholas was in his mother's train when the four
deputies arrived. He immediately emerged, crossed the platform and
stood before the four representatives of the new republic like a
school child about to be punished; with one hand he came to a salute,
recognizing their authority; with the other he twirled his mustache.

He was shown his carriage and quietly placed under guard. The deputies
took places in another carriage, and then the train steamed out of the
station with Nicholas a prisoner. Arriving at the palace at Tsarskoe
Selo, Nicholas was taken over by the commandant and marched through
the gates of his old residence. And so he disappeared completely from
Russian public life.

Meanwhile the czarina had also been arrested and confined to her suite
of rooms in the palace. All the telephone and telegraph wires were
cut. Most of the palace servants were dismissed and all the doors
except three were locked and barred. A battalion of soldiers now
mounted guard over him who had made more political prisoners than any
other man in the world.

Now began the troubled career of the new Russian republic. The Council
of Workingmen and Soldiers, under whose direct supervision the
fighting forces of the old regime had been overcome and the revolution
organized, and which represented just those elements which the Duma
did not represent on account of the restrictive election laws, felt
its right to exist beside the Duma, possessing at least an equal
authority. Thus the new governing forces started under very peculiar
conditions, with a double head. The Council immediately issued a
proclamation inviting the communities all over Russia to elect local
councils, which might send their delegates to Petrograd to associate
themselves with the deputies elected by the workingmen and soldiers of
the capital.

Another of the first acts of the Provisional Government was to order
the liberation of all the political prisoners of the old regime,
especially those in Siberia, and to invite all exiles abroad to return
home. The return of some of these political exiles roused quite as
much enthusiasm and popular demonstration as had the overthrow of the
autocracy itself. The progress of Catherine Breshkovskaya, the
"grandmother of the Russian revolution," from Siberia to Petrograd wa