‘The births of two children in February and in March were the only glimpses of hope. Marie had a boy, Alexander (the current Emperor Alexander III), and Mary had a girl, Eugenia. This birth was very difficult: the baby appeared three weeks earlier due to the fright that the mother experienced. She saw her little son Kolya push a heavy table with candlesticks, which toppled over, and she decided that the child had died under it. But he immediately got up, safe and sound, while his mother began to complain about spasms and had a premature and very difficult birth. Fortunately, the child was very small, and this circumstance saved Mary’s life. The girl was so weak that she could not feed at the breast, and for six weeks they doubted that she would survive. This small child had great energy, she had to live and had, as it turned out later, the strongest character of all Mary’s children’.