r-disciples in Petrograd had been suspended, for
the monk remained at the palace, and scarcely ever left it. Protopopoff
came daily to consult with the Empress, with her mock-pious favourite and
the treacherous pro-German Fredericks, for yet another fresh plot was
being formed against those who were so antagonistic to the Government, a
plot which was to be worked by unscrupulous _agents-provocateurs_, with
the object of placing among their effects incriminating correspondence
relating to a widespread conspiracy (which did not exist) to overthrow
the monarchy and suppress the House of Romanoff. The idea, having
originated in Rasputin's fertile brain, had been taken up with frantic
haste, for each member of the "dark forces" had decided that "something
must be done," and that the situation had become most perilous for them
all.

In those snowy December days, the people at last realised that they were
being tricked, and that the German-born Empress was striving, with her
sycophants and with the "holy" rascal, for a separate peace. Secret
meetings were being held everywhere in Petrograd, the police were making
indiscriminate arrests, and Schluesselburg was already overflowing with
its human victims whom Rasputin had indicated, for a hostile word from
him meant imprisonment or death. He was, indeed, Tsar of All the Russias.

Such was the breathless state of things at Tsarskoe-Selo in the last days
of December.

* * * * *

Then came the final dramatic coup.

Of its exact details I have no knowledge. I give--as I have given all
through this narrative of fact--only what I _know_ to be actual truth.

On December 29th, at eleven o'clock, I left the palace to take a message
to Protopopoff, and to interview the much-travelled Hardt, who was coming
to Petrograd from Stockholm with his usual fortnightly dispatch from
Berlin. I returned to the Palace about eight o'clock in the evening, when
I received a message through one of the silk-stockinged servants, whose
duty it was to wait upon "his holiness," to the effect that the monk had
gone suddenly to Petrograd upon urgent business, and would return on the
morrow.

Naturally, I accepted the message, ate my dinner, read the paper, and
after a chat with Madame Vyrubova, who lived in the adjoining apartments,
I retired to bed.

Next day I returned to the Gorokhovaya, but the monk had not come back.
Countess Ignatieff called upon him, but I had to exp