In spite of this episode, which would have interfered with the career of any one but Rasputin, the fame of the latter grew with every day that passed. He established himself at last in the town of Tiumen in Siberia, where he hired the whole of a large house for himself and some of his most favoured disciples, and he began to turn his activity into another and more profitable channel. He established reception hours every day, when all his followers, admirers and friends could come to speak with him about any business they liked. Hundreds of people used to attend those receptions, among them some very influential persons curious to see and speak with the modern Peter the Hermit, who declared that he had been called by God to save Holy Russia. In some mysterious manner he acquired the reputation of having great influence in high quarters, where (this must be noticed) he was at the time still quite unknown. Governors fearing dismissal, rapacious functionaries whose exactions had become too flagrant, as well as business men in quest of some good “geschaft,” to use the German expression employed before the war among financial circles in Russia, crowded round him, waiting sometimes hours for an opportunity to speak with him, and fully believing in his capacities for obtaining what they required. Rasputin soon became a kind of business agent and surrounded himself with a number of secretaries of both sexes, whose occupation consisted in attending to his correspondence--he could himself hardly read or write--and in receiving the numerous offerings which were being brought to him daily. These secretaries, among whom figured a sister of the Bishop of Saratoff, Warnava, made an immense amount of money themselves because no one was ever admitted into the presence of Rasputin without having previously paid dearly for this favour. Very soon they established a tax in regard to the audiences granted by their master. Besides this sister of Bishop Warnava, Rasputin had another female secretary, and they both accompanied him in all his travels, calling themselves his spiritual sisters. They constituted, so to say, his bodyguard, and wherever he went, even in St. Petersburg, they never left off attending him and seeing to all his wants. They were the channel through which everything had to go, and without their consent no one was ever admitted into the presence of the “Saint,” as they already had begun to call him.