one of my stepmother's daughters by her first marriage. She explained that we must immediately dress and go to Petrograd. She had come from there in an automobile to fetch us. According to information which had come to her the uprising of the Bolsheviks was set for the next day . . . " It proved a false alarm and the family returned to their homes in St. Petersburg, a decision that was a fatal error. The Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich was arrested in August 1918, sent to the St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress, and despite constant pleas for his release by Princess Paley, he was shot on 29 January 1919 and buried in a mass grave. His remains were not discovered until 2011. The Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and her second husband, Prince Roman Putiatin, chose to stay in St. Petersburg, finally escaping to Romania in 1919. Princess Olga Paley escaped via Finland in 1920, and died in Paris on 2 December 1929, at age 64. Marianne and Nicholas von Zarnekau managed to escape from Russia some time after 1923 with the help of her first husband, Peter Dournovo, who arranged for their passage to Finland. They settled in Belgium, and Marianne is mentioned in Anthony Summer's book The File on the Tsar: "Countess de Zarnekau, an ex-patriate living in Brussels, told how in about 1923 a nun arrived at their home in Moscow and announced mysteriously that the Tsar and all the family were alive 'somewhere close to the border'. She asked for, and was given, wooly socks to warm the imperial feet. Those who had been able to deal with the little matter of the Tsar's rescue were now apparently having trouble in getting him the right size in socks." Acting career In 1930, Marianne divorced Count von Zarnekau, her third husband, and launched her acting career in Europe under the stage name of "Mariana Fiory". In February 1930, she appeared at the Theatre Mathurins in Paris, starring in the role of a German soldier's grieving fiancee in "The Man I Killed," a dramatization of the war novel L'Homme que j'ai tue. Playwright Maurice Rostrand reportedly wrote the play specifically for Marianne. The show was a hit and won glowing reviews. Marianne went on to Rome, to star opposite Emma Gramatica, a popular Italian film actress of the 1930s. Mariana Fiory, the former Countess von Zarnekau,