At that time Mr. Protopopoff was vice president of the Duma. No one knew exactly how he had contrived to secure his election as such, considering his reputation of reactionary and especially of opportunist. He had, however, succeeded in getting himself appointed, and the fact that he held this position gave him a certain weight and prestige abroad. He was given very precise instructions as to what he was to do, and started with several of his colleagues of the Duma for England, under the pretext of returning the visit which some members of the English House of Commons had paid to Petrograd a few months earlier. On his way back, he stopped at Stockholm as I have already related, conferred there with an agent of the German Foreign Office called Mr. Warburg, and settled with him the conditions under which an eventual peace could be concluded. After this Protopopoff returned to Russia, where, however, the story of his Swedish intrigues had already become known so that he was awarded a very poor welcome by his friends. People believed then that his political career had come to an end, when, just at this juncture, the most important post in the Russian Empire, that of Minister of the Interior, became vacant, thanks to the dismissal of Mr. Chvostoff who had tried to get rid of Rasputin with the help of the monk Illiodore, and, to the general stupefaction of the world, the place was offered to Mr. Protopopoff by the Empress herself. By that time one had become used in Russia to every possible surprise in regard to the appointment of Ministers, and nothing that could happen in that line astonished those (and they were legion) who knew that it was a gang of adventurers that was ruling the country. The rise of Mr. Protopopoff was not therefore considered by them as something out of the way, but in parliamentary circles it gave rise to deep indignation; an indignation which eventually found its way into the press, where, however, it was very quickly suppressed by the censor, and also in the various speeches uttered in the Duma, during which allusions were made for the first time to the unhealthy influence exercised by the Empress over her husband.