"That captain shall pay—and pay dearly—for his insult! Think!—only think of it, Féodor—of sending my clothes to Her Majesty! What must she have thought! To me it seems that she doubts whether I can take care of myself. And am I not inspired, divine!—sent as the saviour of Russia, and immune from the attacks of mankind!"
His subtle mujik mind clearly saw the bad impression which must be produced upon the woman who was so completely beneath the thraldom of his hypnotic eyes. If he could be beaten as a charlatan, then such action of his enemies must naturally create a doubt in her mind. Hence he was scheming to exhibit his power.
The worst feature of the position was that from the Officers' Club the incident had leaked out all over Petrograd, until it had become common talk in the cafés. The story of Grichka sitting upon a dung-heap was on the lips of everybody, while a well-known member of the Duma remarked:
"A pity he was not buried in it, never to see the light of day again!"
Yatchevski was, of course, unconscious of the knowledge held by the monk. He was at the Ministry of War, head of one of its many departments, a loyal patriotic Russian, who, like our millions, believed that Soukhomlinoff was "out to win." He was ignorant of the irresistible power which the dirty "saint" could wield.
One day, to Captain Yatchevski's delight, he found himself raised in rank and appointed military commandant of the town of Kaluga, south of Moscow, with permission to take his wife to reside there. Naturally he was gratified to receive so influential an appointment. Though possessed of much money, he had hitherto not progressed very far in his official career, and this favour shown him by the Tsar, who had made the appointment, pleased him immensely.
His wife, of course, felt otherwise. She would be separated from her gay friends, the "sisters" of the monk's "religion." Besides, she saw that by entering Rasputin's cult there was a prospect of becoming on terms of personal friendship with the Empress.
Anyhow, a week later Olga Yatchevski, having bidden farewell to the monk, was forced to depart with her husband to the important town of Kaluga, and for a fortnight I heard nothing.
One morning, however, the monk received a certain General Nicholas Ganetski, of the Imperial General Staff, when, without much preamble, the officer remarked:
"The warning you gave us concerning Yatchevski has proved quite true. He has been in communication with a German agent in Riga named Klöss."