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Updated: May 2, 2025
Returning to Rasputin's handsome room I repeated the message, whereupon he sprang up with eager delight, and ringing up Protopopoff at his house in Petrograd, told him to order an immediate police search of Purishkevitch's house, as had already been arranged.
After dinner, at which they both drank deeply of champagne, the monk and his friend went out to spend the evening at a low-class variety theatre, while I was left alone until midnight. In consequence I visited some friends in the Ivanovskaya, and returned to Rasputin's at about a quarter-past twelve.
He also told her of the diabolical plot to sweep off the population of Vologda and Nijni as an experiment, in order to see how Hun "science" could win the war. Protopopoff came to Rasputin's house half-a-dozen times within the next three days, and it was arranged that a firm of importers, Illine and Stroukoff, of Petrograd, should handle the consignment of preserved meat.
"Oh! merely a simple mujik whose prayers carry right to Heaven," was His Majesty's answer. "He is endowed with most sublime faith." The count then warned the Tsar of the displeasure which Rasputin's presence at Court was creating on every hand, adding: "There are rumours that he is a mere drunken libertine. Make inquiries for yourself of his doings in Petrograd."
And surely hers was a highly dangerous profession. Apparently it was not desired that Rasputin's arrival in Berlin should be known, for we were shown to our rooms by the stout old Russian woman, and I heard the handsome Paula speaking on the telephone in a guarded manner. "And you will call at half-past nine to-night, eh?" I heard her ask, and presently she rang off.
Thus, by slow degrees, the artful monk ingratiated himself with the Imperial family, just as years ago, when a mere cabdriver, in his pre-saintly days, he happened to ingratiate himself with Alexis, Bishop of Kazan, who became greatly struck with him, and later pushed him forward as a holy man, yet for his trouble afterwards found himself swept away, and his successor appointed by Rasputin's own hand.
Now, it must be said that no lady was admitted to those weekly reunions of the sister-disciples unless she first had the full approval of the Starets. She must be good-looking and possessed of either wealth or influence, but in preference wealth. And it was certain that no woman was ever invited unless it was Rasputin's intention to admit her to the secrets of his "religion."
Already one of Rasputin's principal disciples was Madame Golovine, the elder sister of the Grand Duke Paul's morganatic wife, Countess Hohenfelsen, a woman who had become his most ardent follower, and who never failed to attend, with her two daughters, the famous séances held weekly in that big upstairs room.
In the meantime I had been introduced by Boris Stürmer, whom I met almost daily, to Stolypin, a friend of Rasputin's principal disciple in Petrograd, Madame Golovine, and to Monsieur Raeff, who afterwards, by Rasputin's influence, received the appointment of Procurator of the Holy Synod.
It is shameful how any woman in her senses, refined and educated, should fall beneath the fascination of such a brute!" This was greeted with wild exclamations of surprise and indignation. Indeed, so furious became the "sisters" at such open insult that I was, at Rasputin's orders, compelled to conduct her out.
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