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He is due at Tsarskoe-Selo, but he has just telephoned to the Empress that he is delayed. And the delay is in order to hear you." "I am sure I am most grateful, Prince," declared the banker, who seemed very pale and much agitated. His wealth was proverbial in Russia, and even in banking circles in Paris and London. His brother was one of the secretaries of the Russian Embassy in Paris.
You will point out that to the Minister Protopopoff. When the plague breaks out the censorship must be of the strictest." Rasputin nodded. He quite understood. He hated the British just as heartily as did the Tsaritza. A week later we were back at Tsarskoe-Selo, and the monk who pretended to have been on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Tver made to the Empress a full report of his journey to Potsdam.
I found the Minister of War was at Tsarskoe-Selo, and spoke to him there, giving him Rasputin's message, and receiving a reply that he would be with us at ten o'clock that night. I had to keep an appointment, at Rasputin's orders, with Protopopoff to deliver a letter and receive a reply; therefore I was not present when His Excellency the General arrived.
Secret meetings were being held everywhere in Petrograd, the police were making indiscriminate arrests, and Schlüsselburg was already overflowing with its human victims whom Rasputin had indicated, for a hostile word from him meant imprisonment or death. He was, indeed, Tsar of All the Russias. Such was the breathless state of things at Tsarskoe-Selo in the last days of December.
WITHIN a fortnight of the mock monk's audience of the Tsar he found himself installed in a fine suite of rooms in the Palace at Tsarskoe-Selo, one apartment being assigned to myself as his secretary. Rasputin's ascendancy over the Imperial couple became daily more marked. I was the onlooker of a very curious and clever game.
"The letters you have brought to me from Tsarskoe-Selo are satisfactory so far as they go, but there is still much to be done," said the Kaiser. "Tell the Empress that I will reply to her by courier, but that she is to continue her efforts, and that you both have my full and complete support.
Somebody had just started a rumour that there was a secret wireless plant at the palace, by which she could communicate direct with Potsdam. Indeed, so many people believed this that, after the Tsar's abdication, every nook, corner and garret of Tsarskoe-Selo was searched, but without success.
That prophecy, duly fulfilled as it was later on, caused the Empress to regard the dissolute "saint" as a "holy" man. In that eventful hour at Tsarskoe-Selo the die was cast. The Empress had fallen irrevocably beneath the spell of the amazing rascal, and the death-knell of the Romanoffs as rulers had been sounded.
Our new house was larger and more luxurious than the old one. But it also had the false telephone in the study, which was supposed by the "saint's" dupes to be a private wire to the palace of Tsarskoe-Selo!
Alexandra Feodorovna, frantic and bewildered, informed the Emperor by telegraph, and by the time he had returned the monk's body had been recovered from the river. I was present at the Mass served by the Petrograd Metropolitan Pitirim, an evil-liver of Rasputin's creation, after which I went with the body, which was conveyed to Tsarskoe-Selo.
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