No one knows how many Russians in all fled the homeland. Perhaps one million, perhaps many more. We are interested here in seventeen, the senior Romanovs, the grand dukes and grand duchesses who escaped the revolution.

The Turks, themselves defeated in the Great War, treated the Russians surprisingly well and smiled acceptingly when their uninvited guests would rest on the stairs of mosques. They would even allow the Russians to enter the Hagia Sophia, which before the Ottoman conquest of 1453 had been the major cathedral of Eastern Christianity. Greeks and Armenians, old foes of the Turks, were still banned from this enormous mosque.

... despite the Turks' friendliness, most of the exiles soon left Istanbul. No opportunities existed there for them, and Turkey seemed an alien land. Private individuals proceeded to western Europe, French visas being most sought after. Russians still regarded Paris as the center of civilization, especially in contrast to the ferocious Stone Age into which Russia had fallen, or to the sleepy lands of the former Ottoman Empire.

Officials guarding the frontier between Russia and the German zone took malicious delight in harassing those wishing to pass. Since Marie and her husband were without documents and without shelter in a town completely strange to them where they knew no one, they could not stay. Nor could they return.