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knout in one hand, began to scourge the bare flesh. CHAPTER XIX THE SPIRIT OF MADAME BLAVATSKY At the hour appointed by the Czar I presented myself at the Winter Palace to assist at the spiritualist experiments of M. Auguste. I shall not attempt to describe the impression left by the weird scene in the Princess Y----'s oratory. To those who do not know the Slav temperament, with its strange mixture of sensuality and devotion, of barbarous cruelty and over-civilized cunning, seldom far removed from the brink of insanity, the incident I have recorded will appear incredible. I have narrated it, simply because I have undertaken to narrate everything bearing on the business in which I was engaged. I am well aware that truth is stranger than fiction, and I should have little difficulty, if I were so disposed, in framing a story, full of plausible, commonplace incidents, which no one could doubt or dispute. I have preferred to take a bolder course, knowing that although I may be discredited for a time, yet when historians in the future come to sift the secret records of the age, I shall be amply vindicated. I shall only add that I did not linger a moment after the unhappy woman had begun her penance, if such it was, but withdrew from her presence and from the house without speaking a word. The feelings with which I anticipated my encounter with the medium were very different. Whatever might be my doubts with regard to the unfortunate Sophia--and I honestly began to think that the suicide of Menken had affected her brain--I had no doubt whatever that M. Auguste was a thoroughly unscrupulous man. The imperial servant to whom I was handed over at the entrance to the Czar's private apartments conducted me to what I imagine to have been the boudoir of the Czaritza, or at all events the family sitting room. It was comfortably but plainly furnished in the English style, and was just such a room as one might find in the house of a London citizen, or a small country squire. I noticed that the wall-paper was faded, and the hearth-rug really worn out. The Emperor of All the Russias was not alone. Seated beside him in front of the English grate was the beautiful young Empress, in whose society he finds a refuge from his greedy courtiers and often unscrupulous ministers, and who, I may add, has skilfully and successfully kept out of any entanglement in politics. Rising at my entrance, Nicholas II. advanc
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