mpress at Tsarskoe-Selo, but I had not been present,
therefore I remained in ignorance of what had transpired. All I know is
that he returned home and drank a whole bottle of champagne to himself,
in full satisfaction--not that he cared for the wine, for his peasant
taste favoured the fiery vodka.

On entering Peterhof we were met by the valet Tchernoff, who greeted
Rasputin very warmly with some meaning words, and said:

"His Majesty is in his private cabinet expecting you. Come."

Another valet took our hats and overcoats, and then Tchernoff led us up a
great flight of marble stairs, and on through nearly a dozen panelled
rooms with historic portraits, much like those I had once passed through
at Fontainebleau, until he entered the blue drawing-room, a great,
old-fashioned, eighteenth-century apartment adorned by a number of
magnificent pictures by Saltzmann.

Your British public have never truly realised the gorgeousness of the
Palace at Peterhof, or the fact that in the Imperial service at the
various residences there were no fewer than four thousand domestics, most
of them useless and all uniformed. The "Arabys," imported especially from
Abyssinia, and who wore fantastically embroidered blue and gold uniforms
with a great crimson sash, and a kind of turban upon their heads, were
simply well-paid puppets, who added pomp to the gorgeous salons, the
doors of which they guarded.

As we passed through the great rooms on our way to the Tsar's private
cabinet, a hundred servants and officials bowed to us, but Rasputin
remained quite unimpressed. He was possessed of a most astounding
intuition, and he knew that by his mystical practices, his mock piety,
and by apparently ignoring the Imperial pair that success was assured.

At last we stood before the door of the autocrat's room, which Tchernoff
threw open unceremoniously, when we were confronted by His Majesty, who
wore a rough tweed shooting-suit, presenting anything but an Imperial
figure. I had expected to see him in uniform, like the thousand and one
pictures which purport to represent him, instead of which I found a very
ordinary-looking, bearded man, with deep-set eyes, a wan countenance, and
rather lank hair. He was square-built, a trifle below the medium height,
and a man whom, had you passed him in the Nevski, you might have taken
for a Jew tailor or a small tradesman. But the room itself was a
beautiful one, like all the apartments in Peterhof, semicircular