Prince Felix Yousoupoff, on hearing the first shot, had rushed down the stairs and discharged his revolver; but it is said that owing to nervousness his hand shook and missed proper aim, and it was his friend who gave the coup de grâce.
It was afterwards discovered that Rasputin, profiting by his companion’s momentary absence, had emptied the contents of his glass into a vase on one of the pieces of furniture which stood close by; this, either from distrust or because he had already indulged in too numerous libations.
It has been said that Rasputin was only killed in order to make clear whether it was really he who was guilty of all that had happened, or whether things would go on the same after his death. But it seems to me that his death came too late, and his evil work had been so well started that with or without him matters could no longer move up against the stream—they could only follow the current on which they had been started.
And there, in the great Neva, all black in the dark night, they threw beneath the ice the body, at last reduced to impotence, of him who had been the bane of the great Empire, cold in death as the deep icy water that engulfed it.
During a whole week every one wondered what could have become of Rasputin and why he had disappeared so suddenly and mysteriously; the Court camarilla, his friends and the pro-German coterie were at their wits’ ends concerning him.
When the body at last was found, the Empress came to prostrate herself before the remains, showing the most violent sorrow, going afterwards each day to pray at his tomb and invoking the most terrible vengeance on his murderers.
These had been traced; and Nicholas II. left her free to inflict on them whatever punishment she chose.
The Grand Duke Dmitri was sent to the Persian front, and Prince Yousoupoff and his son were exiled to their estates, for it was not at that time easy to inflict a heavier sentence on such important people as the Grand Duke and his accomplices.
The Empress could not indeed by punishment slake the thirst of her soul for vengeance, and the unhappy mother was maddened by dread, only increased with the passing hours, of the realization of the sinister words of the dead man: “If disaster happens to me and I die, the Tzarevitch will die forty days, hour for hour, after me!”
The hour of the Revolution of March 10, 1917, struck; the Emperor being at the time at the Front, the moment had been well chosen, or rather arranged. The red rag of revolt was carried in triumph above the heads of a delirious crowd; ensigns on monuments and everything that could recall an Empire were burned in the great fires lighted in the streets. The Emperor started to return precipitately to the Empress and his children at the Palace of Tsarskoë-Celo, where all the Imperial children were suffering from measles. His first thought was of resistance, and to send his troops against the rebels of Petrograd.