e Gorokhovaya was closed, its wooden shutters were fastened,
and the Empress was desolate without her "holy Father." Stuermer, the
Prime Minister, was with the Emperor, daily plotting and striving for the
betrayal of our nation to the Germans, and "Satan in a silk hat"--as one
of the Grand Dukes had nicknamed the Minister of the Interior,
Protopopoff--had gone on a mission to London, ostensibly in Russian
interests, but really as a spy of Germany. The latter was, of course, not
known at the time, for the British Government sent him on a tour of
munition and other centres, showed him what they were preparing, and
feted him in London as the representative of their ally. We now know
that, on his return to Petrograd, he at once became violently
anti-British, and made a full report of all he knew to the
Wilhelmstrasse!

The purpose of the monk's pilgrimage to Perm was to form a branch of his
believers in that city. He had left Petrograd dressed as a pilgrim, with
hair-shirt and staff complete, and as such he posed to everybody. The
world, however, did not know that the rooms allotted to him in the
monastery by the rascally bishop, whom he had himself appointed, were the
acme of luxury, and that in them he held drunken orgies every night.

After we had been there three weeks an Imperial courier brought him a
letter from Peterhof. It was night, and the monk was in an advanced state
of intoxication with his companions, three other mock-pious rascals like
himself.

When I handed him the letter he glanced at the Imperial cipher on the
envelope, and, grinning, exclaimed:

"It is from the Empress. Read out what the woman says."

I hesitated, suggesting that it would be better if I read it to him in
private.

"Bah!" he laughed. "There is nothing private in it. Read it, Feodor."

So, thus ordered, I obeyed. The letter was written in Russian, but with
mistakes in grammar and orthography, for the Empress had never learned to
write Russian correctly. These are the words I read for the delectation
of the dissolute quartette:

"HOLY FATHER,--Why have you not written? Why this long dead
silence when my poor heart is hourly yearning for news of you and
for your words of comfort?

"I am, alas! weak, but I love you, for you are all in all to me.
Oh! if I could but hold your dear hand and lay my head upon your
shoulder! Ah! can I ever forget that feeling of perfect peace and
blank forgetfulness tha