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Joffe, on the other: hand, was indeed a person of some importance. The putting of the names in that order was almost as funny as if they had produced a document signed by Lenin and the Commandant of the Kremlin, putting the latter first. Pokrovsky told me a good deal about the organization of this Commissariat, as Lunacharsky, the actual head of it, was away in Petrograd.
They consisted of a certain adventurous prince named Gorianoff, a man named Striaptchef who had been his companion in his early horse-stealing days in his native Pokrovsky and a notorious woman named Sabler.
For more than two months he was absent from Petrograd. One day a frantic message came to me over the telephone from Madame Vyrubova, who inquired the whereabouts of the Starets. "The Father has gone to his convent at Pokrovsky, Madame," I replied. "What!" she gasped. "Gone to Siberia! Why, Her Majesty is daily expecting him here at the Palace. When will he return?"
Make haste and come at once to us. From your sister ALEXANDRA." Of this appeal the Starets took no notice. He preferred the society of his sister-disciples at Pokrovsky to that of the Tsaritza. Besides, was it not part of his clever plan to place the Empress beneath his influence by bringing her to the brink of despair?
The hands of the science professors, so Pokrovsky told me, are frostbitten from touching the icy metal of their instruments during demonstrations. The following figures represent roughly the growth in the number of libraries. In October, 1917, there were 23 libraries in Petrograd, 30 in Moscow. Today there are 49 in Petrograd and 85 in Moscow, besides a hundred book distributing centres.
The household, I found, consisted of one other person, an old Siberian peasant woman of about sixty, named Anna, who came from Pokrovsky, the "saint's" native village. She acted as housekeeper and maid-of-all-work. That first morning spent with Rasputin was full of interest. He was a dirty, uncouth, illiterate fellow who repelled me.
I might here state that later on, when I visited Pokrovsky, I found the wonderful convent, of which he told me such pious stories, consisted of a plain house cheaply furnished in which lived his peasant wife and children, together with twelve of his chosen sister-disciples, foolish women who had made over their money to him and devoted their lives to piety as set forth in his new "religion."
Presently I seated myself at the table and recommenced my secretarial duties, while he went forth. In many letters were drafts for subscriptions for Rasputin's convent in far-off Pokrovsky in Siberia, a place which no one had ever visited, yet in support of which he had obtained hundreds of thousands of roubles.
By this time so deeply had Rasputin corrupted the Russian Church in its centres of power and administration that half the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries were of his creation, his fellow-thief in Pokrovsky having been appointed to a bishopric. Very naturally, Rasputin had made many enemies.
The weak point about the documents is that the most important of them have no reason for existence except to prove that there was such a conspiracy. These are the documents bought by Mr. Sisson. I was interested to see what Pokrovsky would say of them.
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