The Emperor certainly had an heir, and for once rumour was right as to what had indeed happened to the poor child, and he had been made to forfeit the hope of posterity to the line of which he might well be the last member. “Therefore he will not reign,” said my cousins. The Emperor had even chosen his successor, a son of one of the Grand Dukes.[C]
Grand Duke Alexis in addition has very feeble health, and the doctors had doubts whether he would live beyond the age of sixteen, which he has not yet reached. They said that also he was attacked by that infirmity which consists in having a skin too few, and consequently a liability to severe hæmorrhages.
My cousin told me that one day on getting into his bath, the Tzarevitch slipped a little and immediately a great “pocket” of blood formed itself; the same thing occurred one day in stepping out of a boat in which he had been for a sail. In fact the poor boy suffered from a strange and disconcerting illness, which is partly explained to-day, as will be seen later on.
Then I asked who Rasputin was. I was told that he called himself a pope, but in reality he was only a coarse and ignorant adventurer from Siberia; and they spoke with disgust of this intruder and the position he had contrived to acquire.
Rasputin, a name for ever detestable and detested by all who have a grain of feeling of straightforwardness and honesty, is perhaps the most diabolical figure of our century. Some hundreds of years ago he would have been looked upon as a sorcerer.
A native of Pokrovskoe, a little village situated in the province of Tobolsk in Siberia; a mixture of charlatan and satyr; neither monk nor priest, but simply an illiterate peasant; a poor village driver; father of three children left behind in their _izba_, but who later on came to school in Petrograd.
To the most depraved morals he joined a great love of vodka.
After having tried theft several times, and been sentenced to two or three terms of imprisonment, the luminous idea dawned on him one fine day to pose as a saint, thinking the occupation would be more lucrative. He therefore embarked on the life of one of those wandering monks living on alms and of whom I have already spoken.
From the depths of those strange steel-grey eyes came a light endowed with an enormous magnetism, amounting to hypnotism, it seems, and he practised this power on nearly all the women whom he met irrespective of age, surroundings, disposition, bent of mind--whether light or austere.