Protopopoff, who once posed as our friend and hobnobbed; with Mr Lloyd George, was a man of subtle intrigue. From being a friend of Britain, as he pretended to be when he came here as Vice-President of the Duma, he was enticed away by Germany to become the catspaw of the Kaiser, and was hand in glove with the holy rascal, with his miracle-working, behind the throne.
Rasputin, himself receiving heavy payments from Germany, had acquired already the most complete confidence of the Tsar and Tsaritza; indeed, to such an extent that no affair of State was even decided by the weak-kneed autocrat without the horse-stealer’s evil counsel. Loyal to his Potsdam paymaster, Rasputin gave his advice with that low and clever cunning which ever distinguished him. He gave it as a loyal Russian, but always with the ulterior motive of extending the tentacles of German influence eastward.
In the voluminous confidential report here before me as I write, the disclosures of the rise and fall of Rasputin, I find an interesting memorandum concerning a certain Paul Rodzevitch, son of a member of the Council of the Empire. Alexander Makaroff, one of the three private secretaries of the Emperor, had died suddenly of heart disease, the result of a drinking bout at the Old Donon, and at the dinner-table of the Imperial family at Tsarskoe-Selo the matter was being discussed, Rasputin being present. He was unkempt, unwashed—with untrimmed beard, and a filthy black coat greasy at the collar, and his high boots worn down at heel, as became a “holy man.”
The Tsar was deploring the death of this fellow Makaroff, a person whose evil life was notorious in Petrograd, and whose young wife—then only twenty—had followed the example of the Empress, and had become a “sister-disciple.”
“Friend!” exclaimed the “Saint” with pious upward glance, for he had the audacity to address the Emperor thus familiarly, “Friend! Thou needst not seek far for another secretary; I know of one who is accomplished, loyal and of noble birth. He is Paul Rodzevitch. I will bring him to thee to-morrow as thy new secretary—and he will serve thee well.”
His Majesty expressed satisfaction, for the holy man, the holiest man in all holy Russia, as was his reputation, had spoken.
Next day the good-looking young fellow was appointed, and into his hand was given His Majesty’s private cipher. None knew, until it was revealed by the band of Russian patriots united to unmask the spy, that this fellow Rodzevitch had spent two years in Germany before the war, or that he was in receipt of a gratuity of twenty-five thousand marks annually from the spy bureau in the Königgratzer-strasse in Berlin!
By this means Rasputin placed a spy of Germany upon all the Tsar’s most confidential correspondence.
Madame Vyrubova, and the infernal witchdoctor, were already all-dominant. Stürmer and Protopopoff were but pawns in the subtle and desperate game which Germany was playing in Russia. The food scarcity engineered by Kurloff; the military scandals engineered by a certain creature of the Kaiser’s called Nicolski; the successful plot which resulted in the destruction of a great munition works with terrible loss of life near Petrograd; the chaos of all transport; the constant wrecking of trains, and the breakdown of the strategic line from the Arctic coast across the Lapland marshes, were all combining to hurl the Empire to the abyss of destruction.
One day the Grand Duke Nicholas visited Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had a private interview with the Emperor—Rasputin’s creature, the new secretary Rodzevitch, being present. The Emperor had every belief in the man’s loyalty. His Majesty, weak and easily misled, never dreamed of treachery within his private cabinet.