n the Vladimirskaya.
I venture to think that the police have but little inscribed to my
detriment save perhaps a few students' pranks in the Kreshtchatik, and
the record of that memorable night when we daubed with blue and white
paint the equestrian statue in front of the Merchants' Club, and I was
fined twenty roubles by the bearded old magistrate for the part I played
in the joke.

Had there been anything serious against me I doubt whether I should have
occupied, as I did for some years, the post of confidential secretary to
"Grichka," that saintly unwashed charlatan whose real name was Gregory
Novikh, and whom the world knew by the nickname of "Rasputin."

Of my youth I need say but little. After my student days I obtained,
through the influence of a high Government official named Branicki, a
friend of my father, a clerical post in the bureau of political police of
the Empire, a department of the Ministry of the Interior, and for several
years pursued a calm, uneventful life in that capacity. In consequence of
a grave scandal discovered in my department--for my chief had secured the
conviction of a certain wealthy nobleman named Tiniacheff, in Kharkoff,
who was perfectly innocent of any offence--I was one day called as
witness by the court of inquiry sitting in Moscow.

It was at that inquiry early in 1903 that I first met General
Kouropatkine, who at that time had risen to high favour with Her Majesty
the Empress and was--as was afterwards discovered--urging the Tsar to
make war against Japan, well knowing that any attacks by us would be
foredoomed to failure. At the General's instigation I was transferred to
the Ministry of War as an under-secretary in his Cabinet, and he sent
me--on account of my knowledge of Italian--upon a confidential mission to
Milan. This, I presume, I carried out entirely to his satisfaction, for
on two other occasions I was sent to Italy with messages to a certain
Baron Svereff, a rich Russian financier living in San Remo, and with whom
no doubt Kouropatkine was engaged in traitorous dealings.

One day, having been called by telephone to the house of His Excellency,
I found, seated in his big luxuriously furnished room, and chatting
confidentially, a strange-looking, unkempt, sallow-faced man of thirty or
so, with broad brow, narrow sunken cheeks, and long untrimmed beard, who,
as soon as he turned his big deep-set eyes upon mine, held me in
fascination.

His was a most striking counte