Once, while in the monastery bakery, the monk suddenly grabbed a red-hot poker and, running to the abbot's chambers, put it at the feet of the emperor depicted in the portrait. At the same time, he non-stop repeated: The Emperor will be without legs! The Emperor will be without legs!"
On April 17, 1818, a son was born to the grand ducal couple Nikolai Pavlovich and Alexander Feodorovna Romanov in Moscow. The boy, like his reigning uncle, was named Alexander. Still not knowing whether her son would be the future emperor, Alexandra Feodorovna wished to know what fate awaited their firstborn. The wish of the Grand Duchess was fulfilled. In Moscow, they found the holy fool Theodore, who was famous throughout the city for his unexpected and accurate predictions. Looking at the boy, the holy fool uttered: "will be mighty, glorious and strong, will be one of the greatest sovereigns in the world, but still (he said with horror) he will die in red boots." The words of the predictor about the power of the future emperor were pleasing to the mother's heart, although the secret meaning of this prediction remained unclear to her. But the last words of the holy fool saddened Alexandra Fyodorovna a little. In the prophetic words of Theodore, she sensed a bad omen of the future fate of her son.
More than sixty years have passed since that memorable prediction of Blessed Theodore. Russia really got a mighty, glorious and wise king. For a long time, neither Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich nor his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, who died in 1850, was alive. Emperor Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I on the Russian throne, was already sixty-three years old. Will the prediction of the holy fool come true?
On Sundays, the favorite event of Alexander II was a review of a certain part of the guard troops on the parade ground of the Mikhailovsky Palace. The guard review was solemn. It was attended by a particularly privileged part of the officer class, and often by ambassadors and advisers of foreign states. But in the first two months of 881, these reviews were canceled for some unknown reason. It was rumored that the police department, knowing about the repeated attempts on the life of the emperor, strongly recommended that his majesty temporarily cancel these reviews. The emperor heeded the advice of the police. But on that day, March 1, 1881, circumstances were such that the sovereign could not cancel such a parade. Many young officers of the Horse Guards were impatiently awaiting him, the highest dignitaries of the capital were waiting. And Alexander, accompanied by numerous guards,went to this review.
Standing on the parade ground in anticipation of the emperor, some of the officers in a casual conversation told each other the following incident, which they had read from newspapers five years ago. In 1876, the newspaper Istanbul, published in Constantinople, told its readers about an episode that took place at the Russian embassy in Turkey. The then Russian ambassador to Constantinople, Count Ignatiev, once summoned the famous Turkish interpreter of dreams, Ali Efendi, and asked him to explain a dream that Tsar Alexander II had dreamed of. The sovereign saw in a dream two moons: one dark red, the other of an ordinary color. Ali Efendi interpreted it this way. The Red Moon is an early war in the Balkans between Turkey and Russia. And the ordinary moon is the growth of the revolutionary movement in Russia, the result of which will be the death of the sovereign-emperor.
“Gentlemen,” said one of the young officers, after hearing this story, “I have such a presentiment (God forbid, of course) that perhaps today the sovereign's prophetic dream will come true”.
And the subsequent tragic events, as it were, confirmed the bold assumption of the young officer. When the sovereign and his retinue drove along the embankment of the Catherine Canal, the terrorist Rysakov threw a homemade bomb into the sovereign's carriage. The explosion only slightly wounded Alexander II. But the second bomb, thrown by another terrorist, proved fatal to the emperor. From the strongest explosion, the sovereign lost both legs. An hour later, in the palace, he died of blood loss. Russia is in mourning. The emperor's standard is hung over the Winter Palace. The second son of the deceased sovereign, Alexander III, is preparing to enter the throne.
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There is another case of a successful prediction about the impending terrible death of Alexander II. The abbot of the Sergievskaya Hermitage, Archimandrite Ignatius, had in his chambers a large, full-length, portrait of Alexander II by prof. Lavrov. 14 years before the sovereign's martyrdom, a novice who was recognized as abnormal asceticised in this desert. He had already twice visited the insane asylum, but each time he was welcomed back to his monastery, however, without the special favor of the abbot.
Once, while in the monastery bakery, this monk suddenly grabbed a red-hot poker and, running with it to the abbot's chambers, put it at the feet of the emperor depicted in the portrait. At the same time, he frantically shouted: “The Emperor will be without legs! The Emperor will be without legs! The monastics decided that such a daring act of the novice was another attack of madness, and they ignored what had happened. Later, the artist Lavrov, having attached a new canvas to the portrait, painted on the missing part at the feet of the emperor. As you can see, this prediction of the mad monk was fully justified.
