The Princess introduced at Court a quack medical man from Thibet called Bachmanoff, who, she pretended, had brought with him from his country all kinds of secret remedies which she advised the Czarina to try on the little Grand Duke Alexis. The fond mother believed her, and Bachmanoff became one of her favourites. It is impossible to say whether he would have cured the child, because the latter’s nurse, a sailor called Derewenko, of whom he was inordinately fond, and whom I have already had occasion to mention, threw out of the windows all the powders and potions which Alexandra Feodorovna asked him to give to her son, and took great care the boy should not get anything but what his own doctor had ordered him to take. Ultimately the Grand Duke got better and stronger, and last year he might have been pronounced cured, at least in so far as the chronic ailment from which he was suffering could be cured. But the Empress in her joy at this unexpected recovery was persuaded that it had taken place, thanks to the Thibetan, in whom she believed more than ever. The friendship for Madame Wyroubieva was perhaps even worse than the attachment of the foolish Sovereign to the Princess Dondoukoff. Madame Wyroubieva was the daughter not of the Emperor’s private secretary, as she represented herself to be, but of a State Secretary (which is quite a different thing, being a purely honorific position) called Tanieieff. She had been married to a navy officer with whom she could not agree, and they were divorced, not because he had grown mad, as she declared (divorce for insanity is not allowed in Russia), but because he had found reason to object to her conduct. The Empress, for reasons no one ever understood, took her part and invited her once or twice to the Palace of Czarskoi Selo. Madame Wyroubieva made the most of her opportunities and soon became quite indispensable to Alexandra Feodorovna. She it was who, with the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, introduced Rasputin into the Imperial household, and with him she established such control of the Czarina’s actions that soon the latter became simply a tool in their hands.