After these debates, during which had been voted by an immense majority the immediate release of the arrested workmen, Mr. Protopopoff rushed to Tsarskoie Selo, the metropolitan Pitirim, and Mr. Sturmer (who had remained a persona grata at Court, notwithstanding the fact that he had been compelled to resign his former functions of Prime Minister) accompanied him. A conference took place between them and the Empress, towards the close of which Nicholas II. was asked to come in and to listen to the decisions that had been arrived at, which he was requested to sanction. This conference decided that the negotiations already engaged with Germany in view of the conclusion of a separate peace should be hastened; that the Duma should be prorogued for an indefinite period of time, and the police armed with machine guns, in order to be able to crush at once, by a display of its forces, every popular manifestation that might be attempted in favour of a change of government, should such manifestation take place in the capital. Here I am touching in this short sketch of the Russian Revolution upon a point which is still dark, the point concerning this separate peace with Germany, about which there arose at that time so much talk in Petrograd. The idea of a step of that kind, which would have constituted an arrant treason in regard to the Allies of Russia, had been conceived first in the brain of Mr. Sturmer, to whom most probably it had been suggested by his confidential friend and secretary, Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, about whom I have already spoken in the first part of this book, and who, after the murder of Rasputin, had been finally brought to trial and sentenced to eighteen months hard labour for blackmail. He had always been in the employ of Germany, and he had spoken to his patron of the necessity for putting an end to a war which, if it went on much longer, might endanger the very existence of the dynasty. Mr. Sturmer had also sympathies for the “Vaterland,” and he was but too glad to act according to the hints which were given to him by a man in whom he had every confidence. He found an unexpected ally in Rasputin, who in his turn induced the Empress through Madame Vyroubieva to rally herself to his opinion, which was a relatively easy thing to do, considering the fact that she had been already, of her own accord, working towards a reconciliation between the Romanoffs and the Hohenzollerns, the only people whom she thought of any consequence in the whole affair. The difficulty consisted, however, in finding a person willing and disposed to act as intermediary in so grave a matter. Rasputin knew Protopopoff, discussed the subject with him, and found him quite ready to enter into the views which he expounded to him.