“There was a terrific time at the palace. The Emperor was horrified, and the Empress, I think, was nearer the insanity they accused her of than she had ever been before. They demanded the name of every man and woman connected with the plot, and promised that every one of them should be brought to sternest justice. But what power had they, after all? The grand dukes and the whole family stood as one against the Emperor and Empress. They declared that no one should be punished for that atrocious crime. I cannot tell you all they said and did, because that would be revealing confidences. But they held a strong enough club over the poor Emperor when they threatened to desert him in a troubled and uncertain time. He was absolutely forced to agree that only the principal plotters should be banished to their estates, and the others should be left unpunished. Afterward, when we could talk about it at all,” Mme. Virubova resumed, “I reminded the Empress that the day before Rasputin was murdered that Yussupoff boy had telephoned to me asking me to arrange for him to see the Empress. She had declined to see him, and we both believe that if she had received him he would have killed her and then, very likely, me also. We are convinced that there was a great assassination plot all laid. But there is no proof.” This, then, is how the Rasputin murder appears in the reverse. Prince Felix Yussupoff did not look like a wholesale assassin to me, but, then, neither did Anna Virubova look like a poison plotter. Evidently you have to be accustomed to the atmosphere of courts to judge these things. I don’t judge anybody in this grewsome drama. I leave that to history. I asked Mme. Virubova why the court cliques plotted against the Empress. “It was inevitable,” she replied. “The Empress came there, a stranger, a poor, beautiful, painfully shy young girl. She did not know how to flatter or win favor. She was studious, and she was devoted to her husband and children. They needed her devotion--oh, far more than the ordinary family needs that of the mother. You have heard, I suppose, some of the atrocious slanders that have been circulated about the Empress. One of these had it that she encouraged the Emperor in his weakness for alcohol because she wanted to keep him in a muddled state of mind and herself be the real ruler of Russia. The exact opposite is true. The poor Emperor did drink too much sometimes, but it was not her fault. There were others at that court who were vitally interested in keeping their Emperor in a muddled state of mind, and they constantly played on his weakness. His wife fought for him desperately, did everything in her power to save him from these men.