"No, no!" she shrieked. "Forgive me! forgive me, Father! I—I was mad—mad! Ivan urged me to do this—to kill you!"
"Write as I tell you, Féodor," Rasputin ordered.
Then, as I sat at the table, he dictated the following lines:
"It is by our order that the woman Olga Alexandrovna Bauer, native of Orel, shall be deported without trial to Yakutsk, in Eastern Siberia, and there sent to penal servitude for life. And further, that Ivan Ivanovitch shall be confined for life in the Fortress of Schlüsselburg. Given at our Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo, December 1st, 1916."
"The Emperor will sign that to-morrow," he added.
The unfortunate girl, shrieking loudly, threw herself at the feet of the monk, imploring forgiveness.
"No, my pretty one!" he replied. "You would open your lips if I gave you the chance. But you will not have it. You are my enemy, and the enemies of Gregory Rasputin never prevail for long, for he takes good care of that!"
She had a fit of hysterics, but quickly came to consciousness again, only to find herself in the hands of six grey-coated police officers, who roughly bundled her out into the hall, shrieking and cursing the blasphemous blackguard who was the real ruler of the Empire.
An hour after the girl Bauer had been taken away a secret messenger from Berlin brought us another dispatch in cipher, which, when I decoded it, read:
"Memorandum from No. 70. 68,428. G.