Rasputin The Rascal Monk Part 10

As the Tsar sat in his red bath-wrap, the unwashed "Saint" made explanation that both the Church and the Duma had declared him to be an impostor, adding:

"I will not trouble myself over those who defame me. They are as dust.

G.o.d has sent me to Russia, and the Russians have despised me."

"But who are your enemies?" asked His Majesty anxiously.

That was the question which Rasputin intended that the Emperor should ask. At once he explained that the Archbishop Teofan and Bishop Hermogene had both turned against him, and in consequence the Tsar called his servant to bring him a telegraph-form at once.

"Whither shall I send those persons?" asked His Majesty.

"Nowhere. Let them work their evil will against thy Empire. G.o.d will himself punish them!" replied the fakir and ex-thief who had self-a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of "Father."

"I shall leave to-night for Siberia, and shall not return."

"No. Forgive them, Holy Father," urged the Emperor apprehensively.

"For my sake and for Russia's sake forgive them. I will send Teofan, your false friend, to the Taurida, and Hermogene shall retire to the monastery of Tobolsk. Helidor, too, is no friend of yours. He shall be sent to prison."

"Thy will shall be done regarding the two first, but spare Helidor. He may yet be useful unto thee," was the crafty mujik's reply.

"Is there any other enemy who should be removed?" inquired the Emperor.

"Tell me, Holy Father--and I will deal with him if you will still remain with us. If you leave, poor little Alexis will die."

The mock-saint, sprawling his legs in the Emperor's dressing-room, reflected for a few moments. He knew that by his own hand Russia was ruled.

"Yes," he said presently. "G.o.d has told me to forgive my enemies. I will do so if thou wilt a.s.sist me. Too little consideration is given to our friends."

"All consideration shall be given them. To whom do you refer?"

The monk drew from beneath his, long black habit a sc.r.a.p of paper already prepared, and consulting, it, said:

"I wrote down here yesterday certain appointments which should be given to those who support thee, against thy enemies." It was a list of favours which the rascal had promised to women for their male acquaintances, and from each he would receive a generous _douceur_, according to the means of the person indicated.

"You will note Ivan Scheveleff, of the Imperial chancellerie. He has served thee well for the past five years, and should have the t.i.tle of Excellency, and consequent promotion," said the religious rascal.

"Again, there is Sergius Timacheff, of the Imperial printing works, who should be appointed a privy councillor; and Madame Grigoiovitch, who is in the Peter-and-Paul prison, should be released and amends made to her for the false charge upon which she was convicted at the instance of Michael Alexandrovitch."

"I will telegraph orders in each case," was the Emperor's reply, as he lit a cigarette prior to his valet entering.

"And the salary of the Minister Protopopoff is far too little. It should be increased by at least one-half. He is thy most devout and devoted friend and servant of Russia."

"That shall be done," was the monarch's weak reply. Little did His Majesty dream that Protopopoff was one of Russians traitors.

"Brusiloff should be watched, as there is evidence of treachery against him. Before the war he was friendly with a man named von Weber, an agent of Germany. Nekrasov, Minister of Communications, is also a traitor, and should be dismissed," said the monk, thus denouncing two of Russia's strongest and most patriotic fighters, who were perfectly innocent.

"It shall be done," replied the Emperor quietly. "Father, I am glad you have, told me." Indeed, owing, to the false statements of pro-German police officials, General Brusiloff was within an ace of arrest a week later. The Minister Nekrasov, however, received his dismissal, Protopopoff being one of his enemies, and in that manner was the monk playing Germany's game.

Thus the evil power of this arch-scoundrel was paramount. By his influence men were made and broken daily. Indeed, to-day dozens of men who because of their suspicion of the saint's "divinity," incurred the blasphemer's displeasure are, languishing in gaol in various remote parts of the Empire, while German agents occupied some of the "highest offices in Russia," while the head of the Church of holy Russia had been appointed by the unwashed blackguard himself.

As proof of this interview at Livadia, the _dossier_ of Gregory Rasputin, the Siberian Cagliostro, which is before me, contains the following letter:

"Rizhsky Prospect, 37.

"My dear Father,--I have heard that you have left upon a pilgrimage to your own monastery in Siberia. May G.o.d be with you, and bless you.

To-day my t.i.tle of Excellency is officially announced. My bankers have pa.s.sed to yours the sum of 30,000 roubles. There will be a further sum of 10,000 roubles pa.s.sed if you will kindly send me, under cover, those two letters of the Countess Birileff. I await your reply.--Ivan Scheveleff."

Rasputin's mania for filing his correspondence is the basis of our true knowledge of his astounding career and activity, for the next folio in the _dossier_ is a copy of a blackmailing letter he wrote a few weeks after his visit to the Crimea, to the man Sergius Timacheff. It reads as follows:

"Friend,--It is now many days since His Majesty appointed you Privy Councillor of the Empire, but I have received no word from you or from your bank as we arranged. If I receive nothing by next Thursday, the facts concerning your son's implication in the Platanoff affair (the blowing up of a Russian battleship in the Baltic by German agents) will be pa.s.sed on to the Admiralty. If double the sum we arranged pa.s.ses to my bank before the date I have named, I shall remain silent. If not, I shall take immediate action.--G."

The "holy" blackmailer was becoming more and more unscrupulous. Behind him he had the Emperor and Empress, soothed to sleep by his marvellous cunning and his mock miracles. Incredible as it seems, he was able to evade all the many pitfalls set for him by his enemies, because he swept them all from his path by Imperial orders and stood forth alone as the "Holy Father," sent by Providence to create a new and prosperous Russia.

He had no fear of death. He wore a shirt of mail, and the Palace police, the same ever-alert surveillance as that placed upon the person of the Tsar himself, kept a watchful eye upon him, though through Protopopoff they had orders to relinquish their watchfulness at any moment the "Saint" deemed it necessary.

He frequently deemed it necessary if he held his conferences with Sturmer, Protopopoff, Anna Vyrubova, and the small camarilla of persons who were being so richly rewarded by mysterious incomes from estates they did not possess--or, plainly speaking, by money from Berlin.

Rasputin saw that in order to keep faith with his "sister-disciples" in Petrograd, it was necessary for him to journey again to his Siberian village. He therefore declared to the Emperor that he had much business there, and promised that he would return to Peterhof as soon as the Imperial family arrived there.

When the Tsar of all the Russias had bent and kissed the monk's filthy hands, and promised that his orders should be despatched at once by telegram to Petrograd, the monk sought the Empress, told her what had occurred, explaining how his enemies had denounced "the man sent by G.o.d." The Tsaritza sat appalled. Could the Russian people have denounced her "Holy Father"? To her it seemed impossible. She bent before the rascal and wept bitterly.

"Oh, Sister!" he said in his deep voice, "I will retire to Pokrovsky until these enemies of Russia have been discomfited and defeated. Then, verily, I will return to stand beside thee and fight as thy friend, as G.o.d has commanded me."

Then he took his leave and travelled to the so-called "monastery" he had established in his far-off Siberian village--the big house in which a dozen of his female devotees were so eagerly awaiting him.

CHAPTER SIX.

RASPUTIN'S SECRET INSTRUCTIONS FROM BERLIN.

Now that Rasputin's amazing career is being here investigated, chapter by chapter, the facts disclosed seem almost incredible, but, of course, such a situation could only have occurred in a country where nearly ninety per cent, of the priest-ridden inhabitants are unable to read or write, and which is in most things a full century behind the times.

Surely in no other country in all the world to-day could an illiterate, verminous mujik, who had actually been convicted and punished for the crimes of horse-stealing, falsely obtaining money, and a.s.saulting two young girls, be accepted as a Divine healer, a "holy" man, and the saviour of Russia. Here was a man whose whole life had been one of scandalous ill-living, a low drunken libertine of the very worst and most offensive cla.s.s, actually ruling the Empire as secret agent, of the Kaiser!

By the clever ruse of establishing his cult of "sister-disciples" he had so secured the ears of the weak-kneed Emperor and his consort, that whatever views he declared to them they at once became law. So amazingly cunning was he that he realised that the only way in which to retain the hold he had established at Court was now and then to absent himself from it, first making certain "prophecies," the fulfilment of which could be effected by his secret friends.

As often as he uttered a prophecy and left Petrograd upon one of his erotic adventures--to found provincial circles of the cult of Believers--so surely would that prophecy come true. He foretold the downfall of one official, the death of another upon a certain date, a further relapse of the Tsarevitch, and so on, until their Majesties held him in awe as heaven-inspired. In the high Court circle of which he was the centre, this "Holy Father" could do no wrong, while his most disgraceful exploits, scandals unprintable, were merely regarded as mundane pleasures allowable to him as a "saint."

No reign since the days of the Caesars was more fraught by disgraceful scandals than those last days of the _regime_ of the ill-fated Romanoffs. The Roman empresses were never traitors as the Tsaritza most certainly was. Can any one have sympathy with the once-Imperial, afterwards exiled to Siberia--that same zone of that illimitable tundra to which the Tsar of all the Russias had exiled so many of his innocent and patriotic subjects, men and women who fought for Russia's right to live, to expand, and to prosper? Let us remember that in Siberia to-day lie the bones of a hundred thousand Russian patriots, persecuted under the evil _regimes_ of Alexander and of Nicholas. In the days of the ex-Tsar's father I went to Siberia, and I visited the convict prisons there. I saw convicts in the mines chained to wheelbarrows by forged fetters, and I saw those poor tortured wretches who worked in the dreaded quicksilver mines of Nertchinsk, their teeth falling out and their scalps bare. Of what I myself witnessed, I years ago placed on record in black and white. Those reports of mine will be found in the public libraries of Great Britain. But to-day they do not concern the reader of this book only inasmuch as they furnish proofs, with others, of the oppressive hand of the Romanoffs upon the devoted and long-suffering people of Holy Russia--"Holy"--save the mark! The erotic rascal Rasputin was in himself a striking example of the men who control the Paroslavny Church.

This mock-pious blackguard, to whose artful cunning and clever cupidity has been due the death of hundreds of thousands of brave Russians of all cla.s.ses in the field, held the fortunes of the great Empire within the hollow of his dirty paw.

The contents of the big _dossier_ of his private papers disclose this satanic scoundrel's double-dealing, and the true terms in which he stood with the Wilhelmstra.s.se.

To me, as I study the doc.u.ments, it is astounding how accurately the Germans had gauged who were their actual friends in Russia and who were their enemies. Surely their sources of information were more astounding and more complete than even the great Stiebur, the King of Spydom, had ever imagined.

It sterns that while Rasputin was living a dissolute life at the "monastery" he had established in his far-off native village of Pokrovsky, he received many telegrams from Tsarskoe-Selo, both from the Emperor and Empress, urging him to forgive his traducers and to return.

To none of these he responded. One day, however, he received a telegraphic message which came over the wires as a Government one, marked "On His Imperial Majesty's Service," from Madame Vyrubova. Its copy is here before me, and reads:

"Return at once to Petrograd. A dear friend from afar, awaits you.

It is most urgent that you should come back at once. There is much to be done.--Anna."

Such an urgent summons showed him that his presence was required. He knew too well that the "dear friend" was a German agent sent in secret to see him.