“This was the beginning of the close friendship between Rasputin and the royal family,” Madame Virubova continued. “But it was by no means the only tie between them. Whatever anybody says about Rasputin, whatever there may have been that was irregular in his private life, whatever he may have done in the way of political plotting, this much I shall always believe about him, he was clairvoyant, he had second sight, and he used it, at least sometimes, for good and holy purposes. His prediction about the health of the Czarevitch was only one instance. Often and often he told us that such and such thing would happen, and it always did. The Emperor and Empress consulted him at several crises in their lives, and he always told them what they ought to do. In each and every case the advice was wise. It was miraculously wise. No one except a person gifted with second sight could possibly have known how to give it.” “Was Rasputin as bad as they say he was?” I asked. “He couldn’t have been,” she answered. “But he may have been more or less licentious. Unfortunately you find men, even in holy orders, who are weak in certain ways. I can only answer positively for myself and the Empress. The charge that either of us ever had any personal relation with Rasputin was a foul slander. Nothing of the kind ever existed, or ever could have existed. Oh,” she cried, a sudden flame dyeing her white cheeks, “how easy, very easy, it is to say that kind of thing about a woman. Nobody ever asks for proofs. Accusation and judgment are joined instantly together. Why, Rasputin was just a wandering monk when we met him. He was dirty, uneducated, uncouth. He did learn to wear a clean shirt and to preserve a sort of cultivated manner when he came to court. That was not very often, by the way. I am sure that the Empress did not see him more than six or eight times a year, and the Emperor saw him more rarely than that.” “Was he a German agent? Was he a part of the political intrigue that threatened a separate peace for Russia?” Anna Virubova was silent for a long minute. She seemed to be pondering. Then she spoke, and her eyes were the candid eyes of a child. “Truly, I do not know. Certainly I did not believe it in Rasputin’s lifetime, but now--I do not know. This much I do know, that it was difficult, very difficult, at the Russian court, to avoid being drawn into political intrigues. You know, of course, what a court is like.” “No,” I said, “I don’t know anything about a court. Tell me what it is like.”