They naively believed that it was their business to lay before the commission their needs and the actual condition of things, and to ask assistance of the government, and utterly failed to grasp that some of their statements and requests supported the contention of the enemy's side, and so spoiled the whole business.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was busily engaged with them for a long while, drew up a program for them from which they were not to depart, and on dismissing them wrote a letter to Petersburg for the guidance of the deputation.

He had his chief support in this affair in the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

She was a specialist in the matter of deputations, and no one knew better than she how to manage them, and put them in the way they should go.