Rasputin is dead! Let us hope that his former supporters have lost, together with him, their audacity and their power of doing mischief. But to say that he was ever a paramount strength in Russian politics is an error which I have tried to correct as far as lay within my power. Rasputin’s story is simpler than many persons think, and perhaps the best explanation that can be given of it is to be found in the Book of Esther in the Bible, a careful perusal of which is recommended to those who are interested in the character of Rasputin. PART II THE GREAT REVOLUTION CHAPTER I On the 15th day of May, 1896, Moscow was celebrating the Coronation of the Czar Nicholas II. of Russia. In the large courtyard inside the Kremlin, an immense crowd was gathered, awaiting the moment when the Sovereign together with his Consort would come out of the Cathedral of the Assumption, to make the customary round of the different shrines and churches, which according to the ancient custom, they had to visit after they had assumed the old Crown of the Russian Autocrats. Among this crowd, there were persons who remembered having witnessed the same kind of ceremony thirteen years before, when Alexander III. had been standing in his son’s place. What a splendid apparition it had been that of this Czar, gigantic in stature, whose quiet and strong features seemed in their placidity to be a true personification of the might of that Empire at the head of which he stood. One had hoped at that time, that he would preside over the destinies of his Realm for long years to come, and no one had given a thought to the possibility that he would so soon be lying in his coffin. Now it was with mixed feelings of pity, combined with a sympathy which already was no longer so strong as it had been when he had ascended the throne, that all were awaiting the new Monarch, who had become in his turn the chief of the old House of Romanoff, so that when the golden gates of the Assumption were thrown open to give passage to the procession which was escorting Nicholas II. all the heads of the numerous people gathered in honour of the occasion, under the shade of the ancient belfrey of Ivan Weliky, turned with an anxious curiosity towards the Sovereign about to show himself for the first time before his people, in the full pomp of his Imperial dignity.