ke the two Ministers of the Crown who sat
in that room, really believed that he was possessed of Divine power.

As we walked in the Nevski, people, mostly women, would rush to him and
kiss his dirty hand, or raise the hem of his greasy kaftan to their lips,
asking for the Father's blessing. By the enlightened Western peoples the
ignorance and superstitions of our great Russian people cannot be
understood. You, who have travelled in our Holy Russia, know our
trackless country where settlements are to distances, as one of our
writers has put it, as fly-specks upon window-panes, where whole villages
are the prey of disease, and where seventy-nine people out of every
hundred cannot read or write. You also know how in the corner of every
room hangs the ikon, how the gold or blue-domed basilica strikes you in
every street, the long-haired priests chanting in their deep bass, the
passer-by ceaselessly crossing himself, the peasantry crushed and
down-trodden, and the middle and upper classes lapped in luxury and
esteeming good manners more highly than morals. Such is Russia of
to-day--Russia in the age of my employer Rasputin, the era of the
downfall of the Imperial Romanoffs, and the fierce struggle with the
barbaric Hun.

In accordance with the plan formed by Boris Stuermer I next day
accompanied the Starets by rail direct to Nijni Novgorod, by way of
Moscow, thence taking steamer down the great Volga, a twelve-hour
journey, to that city where they make bells and ikons, Kazan.

Rasputin had put on his oldest and most ragged monk's habit, and carried
a staff. Over his threadbare dress he wore another of finer texture which
it was his intention to discard ere entering before the shrine, in order
to appear most lowly and humble in the eyes of the shrewd Tsaritza. We
left Petrograd at night, that our departure should not be known and
commented upon, but ere we did so I received a note from the General to
the effect that the director of Secret Police at Tsarskoe-Selo had
telephoned that Her Majesty was not leaving till the following day.

Hence we were travelling a day ahead of the Empress.

Kazan is a city full of the odour of sanctity if judged by the number of
priests and monks one meets in its streets. It is situated about seven
versts from the river, an old-world picturesque place wherein one rubs
shoulders with people in all sorts of curious costumes, especially in the
Tartar suburb where the low houses border upon narro