"No, no!" she shrieked. "Forgive me! forgive me, Father! I--I was mad--_mad!_ Ivan urged me to do this--to kill you!"
"Write as I tell you, Feodor," Rasputin ordered.
Then, as I sat at the table, he dictated the following lines:
"It is by our order that the woman Olga Alexandrovna Bauer, native of Orel, shall be deported without trial to Yakutsk, in Eastern Siberia, and there sent to penal servitude for life. And further, that Ivan Ivanovitch shall be confined for life in the Fortress of Schlusselburg. Given at our Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo, December 1st, 1916."
"The Emperor will sign that to-morrow," he added.
The unfortunate girl, shrieking loudly, threw herself at the feet of the monk, imploring forgiveness.
"No, my pretty one!" he replied. "You would open your lips if I gave you the chance. But you will not have it. You are my enemy, and the enemies of Gregory Rasputin never prevail for long, for he takes good care of that!"
She had a fit of hysterics, but quickly came to consciousness again, only to find herself in the hands of six grey-coated police officers, who roughly bundled her out into the hall, shrieking and cursing the blasphemous blackguard who was the real ruler of the Empire.
An hour after the girl Bauer had been taken away a secret messenger from Berlin brought us another dispatch in cipher, which, when I decoded it, read:
"MEMORANDUM FROM NO. 70. 68,428. G.
"Instructions from the Emperor William are to the effect that Germany will deliver a peace offer to Russia on December 12th.
Inform Her Majesty of this, and tell her to use all her influence with the Emperor and all the Ministers towards an acceptance.
"Instructions to our friend P. [Protopopoff] are to continue his destructive activities. He must muzzle the Press more closely, hold up all food, and continue provocative work in all quarters.
It is only by producing extreme suffering that you can bring about an uprising for peace. Code now changed to No.
5.--Greetings, "S."
Duly the German offer of peace was made on December 12th, and Russia was tottering to her doom. The offer, engineered by the "black forces," gave opportunity to the Duma to express its pent-up feelings. Both Miliukoff and his friend who had so narrowly escaped the "perfume" declared publicly that the camarilla favoured the acceptance of the offer.
Of the truth of this I can myself vouch, for Alexandra Feodorovna had, since her holy Father had received the secret dispatch, spared no effort to induce the Emperor and the Cabinet to accept the olive branch.
Nicholas refused. Whatever may be said of him, I know personally that on many occasions he proved his loyalty to the Allies against the evil counsels of Sturmer and the others.
The nation, however, had to be pacified, so the Tsar called the newly-appointed Foreign Minister, Petrovsky, who represented the best type of bureaucrat, and instructed him how to act. In consequence, three days after the Teuton proposal was made, he announced Russia"s rejection of a "premature peace." Immediately after the Foreign Minister"s declaration, the Duma pa.s.sed a resolution, which contained the following declaration:
"Having heard the statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Duma unanimously favours a categorical refusal by the Allied Governments to enter, under present conditions, into any peace negotiations whatever."
Truly, public opinion was becoming more than ever inflamed.
Yet "Satan in a silk hat," seated in the Ministry of the Interior, was working his evil machinations upon the nation to create the greatest possible suffering and unrest, as his taskmaster in Berlin had ordered.
And in this he had an able a.s.sistant in the unwashed "saint," who a few days before, in collusion with his friend the ex-conjurer, had in a low quarter of Petrograd performed a trick which all believed to be a "miracle."
One of Protopopoff"s schemes, which he successfully carried out, was that of sowing discontent among the ma.s.ses by spreading mysterious leaflets calling for rebellion on the issue of peace. By this he attempted to disrupt the organic life of the country and of the army. With Rasputin he was plotting to create a clamour which would justify the Government in opening separate peace negotiations and throwing the Allies overboard.
Unfortunately for him, however, the unions of zemstvos and of towns remained patriotic. So he prohibited their meetings in order to cause demonstrations and riots.
To all pleas and the warnings of those who saw the handwriting on the wall the Emperor remained deaf.
One afternoon, while I was with Rasputin in his apartments at the palace, the Empress entered, flushed and excited.
"Father! I have had such a blow. What do you think has happened?" she gasped. "Nicholas [the Grand Duke] has just had the audacity to read before Nikki and myself a statement which was outrageous. I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hand and tore it up! Oh! it is infamous that I should be thus treated!"
"What has happened?" asked the monk, in his slow, deliberate way. "Do not distress thyself, my sister." And he made the sign of the cross.
"He has declared that you, our dear Father, have become the ruler of Russia; that Protopopoff was appointed through you, and that about you is centred a clique of enemy spies and charlatans, and he actually urged Nikki to protect Olga and myself from you! When he had finished his statement, fearing that he had gone too far, Nicholas said, "Now call your Cossacks and have me killed and buried in your garden." Nikki merely smiled."
"He would hear nothing against thee, I hope," said Rasputin anxiously.
"Nothing. Nikki a.s.sured him that I had nothing to do with politics, and dismissed the allegations by declaring that he entirely disbelieved them."
"Excellent!" exclaimed the monk; but afterwards, when he sat in the room, he remained silent and thoughtful for a long time.
At last he exclaimed aloud to me:
"Miliukoff must be removed. While he lives we are all in danger. We must try another method."
Matters had now reached a most desperate crisis, for on the following day Vladimir Purishkevitch, who had opposed the Government so strenuously in spite of his monarchical affiliations, came to see the Tsar to warn him also of the evil forces about him. But His Majesty took no heed.
Therefore, two days later, he delivered from the tribune of the Duma some terrible allegations against the camarilla.
Meanwhile Rasputin had been active, and, with Sturmer"s aid, had got hold of a man named Dubrovin, the leader of "the Black Hundred" and a close a.s.sociate of the "dark forces." This man had, in turn, induced a man named Prohozhi, a member of the organisation, to accept a sum of money in return for the a.s.sa.s.sination of Miliukoff by means of a bomb.
All was arranged for the night of December 20th, and Rasputin sat with the Empress eagerly awaiting news that the deed had been accomplished.
Instead of that, however, Protopopoff rang up from his house in Petrograd to say that Prohozhi had, on reflection, hesitated to harm Miliukoff, and moreover had revealed to young Prince Felix Youssoupoff and several others the whole of the conspiracy!
When told of this the Empress fainted. She saw that all was now lost.
Indeed, on the following day Miliukoff rose in the Duma and made a second and more powerful attack upon the camarilla, singling out Protopopoff as one of the worst offenders. Again he held in his hand his famous bundle of doc.u.ments, evidence of the treachery of the "dark forces," and in a magnificent speech he defied the Government, and urged the people to judge matters for themselves in the light which those doc.u.ments would cast upon events. In that latest denunciation of Rasputin and his friends there was a ring that resounded through Europe.
The Tsar had again left for the front, while the Empress, nervous and trembling, held Rasputin and Anna ever at her side. The precious trio which had wrecked Russia were now seriously perturbed at the ugly state of public opinion. A dark storm-cloud had arisen, but Rasputin, with his boldness and contempt for the people, a.s.sured the Empress that there was no cause for anxiety, and that all would be well.
The seances of the sister-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 Schlusselburg 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 express my ignorance as to his whereabouts. I told her that he might possibly have gone upon another pilgrimage.
Late that night I went back to the palace, where I found Madame Vyrubova much perturbed.