Alexandra Feodorovna, on having it opened and discovering the insult to her "holy Father," waxed furious. Meanwhile, Rasputin had been discovered, and was at home foaming at the mouth at the indignity. He, "the saviour of Russia," had been thrashed and degraded!
At two o'clock that morning he took a car to the palace, and I accompanied him. He had an interview with Her Majesty, who was attired in a rich dressing-gown of pale-blue silk, and the pair resolved upon a rigid inquiry regarding the affair.
"It is monstrous that you, our dear Father, should have such enemies about you! We will crush them!" she declared angrily. "I will see Nikki about it in the morning. To send me your clothes is a personal insult to myself. It is abominable! These people shall suffer!"
That night we remained at the palace, and next morning Protopopoff was called from Petrograd and informed by the Empress of what had occurred. Later the Minister came to the room wherein I was writing at the monk's dictation, and promised that the whole of the machinery of the Secret Police should be set in motion to discover the perpetrators of the outrage.
Rasputin knew that many of the husbands of his devotees were enraged against him; therefore he could not, at the moment, suggest any particular person who had plotted the affair, and probably the police would have failed to obtain any information had not Captain Yatchevski himself boasted in the Officers' Club of how he had had the Tsaritza's pet "saint" stripped and thrashed.
In Petrograd the very walls had ears; therefore within three hours the "saint" knew the identity of the instigator of the outrage, and gave his name to the Empress.
"We will make an example of him," she said. "Otherwise it may be repeated. I leave it to you, dear Father, to take what reprisals you wish. In any course you adopt you will have the full authority of both Nikki and myself."
For nearly a week Rasputin was undecided as to how he should wreak vengeance upon the unfortunate Yatchevski, whose wife had by this time become one of the monk's most devoted "sisters."
On two or three occasions he went to the Minister of War and chatted with the traitor, General Soukhomlinoff.
Once he remarked to me, after a meeting of the "disciples" at our house in the Gorokhovaya: