nation over women of every age and
every class, had now brought him to the position of the power behind the
Throne.

He already ruled Russia. Tsar and Tsaritza were his puppets, so cleverly
did he play his cards, yet as he frequently remarked to me in the weeks
that followed:

"Kokovtsov is against me. We are enemies. He must go."

I knew that if the Premier had an enemy in Grichka, then the statesman
was doomed.

Now, the plot which Rasputin formed against the new Prime Minister was an
extremely clever and subtle one.

While it was being carried out I often met Vladimir Nicholaievitch, who
was naturally compelled to curry favour with the Father, and consequently
sometimes visited him even against his inclination, no doubt. He was a
long, rather narrow-faced, bearded man, with a pair of deep-set eyes and
a secretive air, subtle by temperament, and keenly alive to his own
interests as well as those of the Empire.

His one sin in the eyes of Alexandra Feodorovna was that he hated
Germany.

"He once lost money in a German financial concern," Rasputin declared to
me one day with a laugh. "That is why he cannot bear the Germans."

The Premier, risen from the middle-class, was a dandy who never looked
one in the face, and whose eyes were ever upon his own clothes, as though
expecting to find specks of dust upon them. He was always immaculately
dressed, and his newly-acquired manners were so perfect that I often
wondered if he carried a book of etiquette in his pocket.

My own estimate of him was that he was too neat, too well groomed, too
civil, too bowing, and too anxious not to forget what he should say at
the right moment. In a word, he was an elegant who had suddenly entered
the Court entourage, in which there was no place for him.

The Tsar had no affection for him, and had merely appointed him because
he believed that he might worry him less than others whose names and
abilities had been put forward.

Poor Kokovtsov! He was in complete ignorance of the clever plot which
Rasputin, at the Empress's suggestion, was engineering against his
patriotic activities. Germany intended to rule Russia in the near
future, and woe betide any statesman who would not remain inert and be
spoon-fed by Teutonic propaganda, or place in his pocket the German marks
held out so temptingly to him. In that way lay advancement, emoluments,
decorations, and the Tsar's favour. To be Russian was, alas! to court
disaster and ignominy.