ons of those
mystical members of the aristocracy. He had been swept into oblivion in a
single day.

Rasputin at last returned, forced to do so by the determined attitude of
the Empress, who without doubt was suffering from serious religious
mania, as well as an acute form of neurotic heart disease. The monk
arrived quite unexpectedly at the Poltavskaya, and rang me up on the
telephone late one evening.

The Bishop Theophanus was, I found, with him. He knew of his arrival, and
had come from Peterhof to meet him and urge him to go next day and see
the Empress.

"If it is thy wish, I will," replied the "saint" with some reluctance,
for he knew too well that already he wielded an unbounded influence over
the Tsaritza. The fellow whose record was the worst imaginable, and
whose very nickname, "Rasputin," meant in Russian "the dissolute," was
regarded by the Empress as possessed of divine power, and as saviour of
Russia and protector of the Imperial family and its heir.

"I hear that Alexis, Bishop of Kazan, has turned your enemy, and has
written to the Holy Synod regarding your questionable monastery at
Pokrovsky," remarked Theophanus. "It is very regrettable."

"Bah! my dear friend. I have no fear," declared the man whose vanity was
so overweening. "Soon you will see that Nicholas himself will do my
bidding. I shall play the tune, and he will dance. All appointments will,
ere long, be in my hands, and I will place one of our friends as
Procurator of the Holy Synod."

At the moment I was inclined to laugh at such bombastic assertion.
Little, indeed, did I dream that within twelve months his prophecy would
be fulfilled, and that the ex-horse-stealer, whose secretary I had
become, would actually rule Russia through the lethargic weakling who sat
upon the throne as Tsar Nicholas II.

A week later I accompanied the Starets to have his first audience with
His Majesty the Emperor at the Palace of Peterhof, that wonderful
Imperial residence where the great Samson Fountain in gilded bronze
throws up from the lion's jaws a thick jet seventy feet high, in
imitation of Versailles, and where nearly six hundred servants were
employed in various capacities. We passed the Marly Pond, where the carp
were called by the ringing of a bell, and the Marly Cascade, where water
runs over twenty gilded marble steps. Truly, the beauties of Peterhof
were a revelation to the Starets and myself. On the previous day he had
had audience of the E