When thinking about this story, which savours in some of its details of superstitions of the Middle Ages, one must always remember what I said at the beginning of this sketch of the career of a man whom circumstances and the hatred of our enemies transformed into a kind of monster devouring all that it touched. This fact is that Russia is still the land of many surprises, because of its tendency toward mysticism, always so strong in all the Slav races. Before Rasputin appeared there had been other sectarians who had drawn thousands of men and women around them and who had inspired crowds with feelings of fanaticism in no wise different from the ones which the modern “Prophet,” as some called him, the modern Cagliostro, as others had nicknamed him, had evoked in the breasts of the simple-minded people whose confidence he had abused and whose spirit of superstition he had impressed. But these had remained strictly in the field of religion and had not meddled with any other questions. They had grouped around them only persons convinced of the truth of their teachings, while Rasputin had gathered about him men determined to use him for the benefit of their money-seeking, money-grubbing schemes; men who saw in the misfortunes that had fallen upon their Fatherland only the possibility to enrich themselves at her expense. They would not have sacrificed the smallest things for her welfare; far less would they have given up the chance to add to the ill-gotten gains they were daily accumulating. Without those persons the whole story of Rasputin would have ended in ridicule. Thanks to them and to their rapacity, it finished in blood. It was, after all, the aristocracy that finally got rid of Rasputin, perhaps to the great relief of many persons who out of weakness, or let us say kindness, had hesitated before taking the strong measure of sending him away where it would have been difficult for him to do any more mischief. And it is doubtful whether his removal anywhere than to a place whence there existed no possibility for him to return would have stopped the evil which the very mention of his name alone was sufficient to cause. Credulous persons exist everywhere and will always exist; timorous ones also abound in the world. Even if Rasputin had been exiled it would have been relatively easy for those who reaped such a rich harvest out of the blood and the tears of the whole Russian nation to attribute to him powers which he did not possess, to threaten with his vengeance the persons who might refuse to lend themselves to their dirty schemes. He would have been a perpetual menace suspended over the heads of those who would have tried to rebel against the directions issued by the enterprising scoundrels who abused the prestige which his so-called holiness had won for a man who in other times and in another country would not have arrested for a single moment the attention of any one, let alone the crowds.