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Shall we get Protopopoff to send instructions to his agents in England?" "No. Something might leak out. I do not trust the Okhrana in London," replied the wary woman, Vyrubova. "Have you forgotten the Meadows affair, and how they betrayed me and very nearly caused a scandal by their bungling? No, if we are to watch Yakowleff, let us do it ourselves.
The Emperor has quarrelled with Alix, and it will be best for him to be absent. I understood. The woman Vyrubova, so trusted by the Tsaritza, was about to administer another dose of that baneful drug to the poor invalid boy a drug which would produce partial paralysis, combined with symptoms which puzzled every physician called to see him.
Stürmer, Fredericks, Protopopoff, the poison-monger Badmayev, Anna Vyrubova, and half-a-dozen others, who formed the dark and sinister forces that were rapidly hurling Russia to her doom, were that day as anxious and terrified as the Empress herself.
It was about a week after I heard of the execution of the Governor of Kaluga that I happened to be at Tsarskoe-Selo again with my evil-faced master, being busy writing in the luxurious little room allotted to him. Madame Vyrubova had been with us, discussing the condition of health of the heir to the throne, when, after she had left, there entered quite unexpectedly the Emperor himself.
Thus she soon had the run of the private apartments, and became upon friendly terms with both Stürmer and Fredericks. This went on for some months, and even at the Imperial Court, where nobody was over-squeamish, the conduct of little Madame Violle who came from nowhere and whose past was quite obscure except to Rasputin, Madame Vyrubova, her sister and myself was looked upon somewhat askance.
His refusal to go to Court was in accordance with his extraordinary intuition and acumen, though his meeting with the woman Vyrubova marked another milestone in the history of Russia's betrayal. The days passed.
Such a scandal roused the ire of the people to fever heat, but it freed me of my hateful compact, and I cut myself adrift for ever from the fascinating Madame Vyrubova and her vicious circle.
Berlin, through Rasputin, piped the tune to which the Imperial Court was dancing the Dance of Death! One night, after Rasputin had dined with Madame Vyrubova and myself, General Soukhomlinoff, Minister of War, entered, swaggering in the uniform of the Grodno Hussars.
You are lucky, my dear Grichka. Madame Vyrubova was evidently entranced by you at Countess Ignatieff's. She will do your bidding. Only, I beg of you to come to Court." The charlatan, however, steadily refused the Bishop's advice. Instead, he left Petrograd that night alone, and went away to his wife and sister-disciples at Pokrovsky, in Siberia.
Though matters had assumed the most serious aspect in those last days of November, Rasputin, bent upon revenge and full of chagrin at being unable to obtain possession of those incriminating letters of the high priestess of his disgraceful cult, Madame Vyrubova, was busy making inquiries, and among those he questioned was Ivan Ivanovitch, a bookbinder in Petrograd, who was Olga's lover, and who regarded the monk with considerable disfavour, a fact of which Rasputin was unaware.
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