It is no exaggeration to say that there was a time when nothing of importance ever occurred in the political, social and administrative life of the Russian capital that was not attributed to Rasputin, and the result of this was that there crowded about him all kinds of dark personalities, who hoped, thanks to his support and influence, to obtain this or that favour. Everything interested him, everything attracted his attention; railway concessions, bank emissions, stock exchange speculations, purchase of properties, acquisition of shares in industrial concerns, arranging of loans for persons in need of them--nothing seemed too small or too important for his activity. He liked to think himself necessary to all these high-born people, whom he compelled to wait for hours in his ante-chambers, just as if he had been a sovereign. And for every favour he granted, for every word which he promised to say, he exacted payment in the shape of a pound of flesh, which consisted, according to circumstances, in a more or less important commission. Ministers and functionaries feared him. They knew that he could do them an infinitude of harm by causing to be circulated against them rumours of a damaging character, the result of which would have undoubtedly been their disgrace or removal to another sphere of action very probably not at all desirable. He was credited for an infinitude of things he had never thought of performing, and he was supposed to have been privy to all kinds of governmental changes that either pleased or displeased those who criticised them. As time went on one accused him among other things of the dismissal of the procurator of the Holy Synod, Mr. Loukianoff, with whom he had for a long period been at daggers drawn and who had openly expressed his disapproval of the “Prophet” and his disbelief in his miraculous powers. The elevation of the Archimandrite Warnava, one of his warmest patrons in the past, to the Episcopal See of Tobolsk was also said to have been Rasputin’s work, and the public persisted so entirely in seeing his hand everywhere and in everything that it was even rumoured that it was he who was answerable for the decision of the censor forbidding the representation of a drama by the celebrated author Leonide Andreieff called, “Anathema,” on the eve of the day when it was to be produced--a decision which caused an immense sensation in the society of the Russian capital.