sciples" were becoming more popular
than ever in Petrograd society, and there were many converts to the new
"religion."

One evening a reunion for recruiting purposes was held by the old
Baroness Guerbel at her big house in the Potemkinskaya. The
yellow-toothed, loud-speaking old lady had been persistent in her appeals
to Rasputin to hold one of his meetings at her house, and he had, with
ill-grace, acceded. On fully a dozen occasions the baroness, who was a
close friend of old Countess Ignatieff, had interviewed me and
endeavoured to enlist my services on her behalf. At last the monk had
said to me:

"Well, Feodor, if the old hag is so very persistent, I suppose I had
better spend an evening at her house and inspect her lady friends."

Thus it had been arranged, the "saint" little dreaming of the outcome of
that fateful reunion.

It seems that Baroness Guerbel had arranged it because she wished to
introduce to Rasputin a certain Madame Yatchevski--the wife of an officer
who was very rich--who saw that, by Rasputin's influence, she could
aspire to a position at Court.

Olga Yatchevski proved to be a pretty, fair-haired little woman of
girlish figure and sweet expression, and from the moment of their
introduction the unkempt monk, after crossing himself and uttering a
benediction, became greatly interested in her, the result being that she
became an "aspirant," and her initiation into the secrets of the cult was
arranged to take place on the following Wednesday.

The meeting ended, the dozen or so neurotic women, all of them of the
highest society in the capital, each bent and kissed the unwashed hand of
Russia's "saviour," as was their habit, and when they had gone the monk
sat down and drank half a bottle of brandy served to him by his ugly old
hostess.

Next night I happened to be out at the theatre when Rasputin, who was
alone, emerged to walk round to a professional blackmailer named Ivan
Scheseleff, who lived in the Rozhsky Prospekt. Suddenly he was set upon
by three Cossacks--afterwards found to have been men hired by Madame
Yatchevski's husband--who, hustling the "saint" into a narrow side
street, gagged him, stripped him of the silk blouse embroidered by the
Tsaritza's own hands, his wide velvet breeches, and his beautiful boots
of patent leather.

Then they drew a knout and administered to the rascal a sound drubbing,
afterwards binding him with rope and shutting him up in a neighbouring
stableyard,