“It is for this innocent I want to see him,” moaned the man. “She is so ill and no doctor can cure her. If only the blessed Gregory would pray over her, I know that she would be well at once. Do you think that he will do so, Barinia?” the man added anxiously. “I am sure he will,” I replied, more because I did not know what to say rather than from the conviction that Rasputin would receive this new visitor. I saw the old creature continue his ascent up the staircase, and the whole time he was repeating to the child, “You shall get well, quite well, Mania, the Blessed One shall make you quite well.” On the last steps before the stairs ended on the landing, two men were busy talking. They were both typical Israelites, with hooked nose and crooked fingers. They were discussing most energetically some subject which evidently was absorbing their attention to an uncommon degree, and discussing it in German, too. “You are quite sure that we can offer him 20 per cent?” one was saying. “Quite sure, the concession is worth a million; the whole thing is to obtain it before the others come on the scene.” “Who are the others?” asked the first of the two men. “The Russo-Asiatic Bank,” replied the second. “You see the whole matter lies in the rapidity with which the thing is made. The only one who can persuade the minister to sign the paper is the old man upstairs,” and he pointed out toward Rasputin’s apartment. Thereupon the two in their turn started to mount the steps. My first interview with Rasputin, all the details of which I wrote down in my diary when I got home, gave me some inkling as to the different intrigues which were going on around this remarkable personage. It failed, however, to make me understand by what means he had managed to acquire, if he really acquired, a fact of which I still doubted, the strong influence which he liked to give the impression he exercised. It was quite possible that he had contrived through the magnetic gifts with which he was endowed to subdue to his will the hysterical women, whose bigotry and mystical tendencies he had exalted to the highest pitch possible. But how could he, a common peasant, without any education, knowledge of the world or of mankind, have imbued ministers and statesmen with such a dread that they found themselves ready to do anything at his bidding and to dispense favours, graces and lucrative appointments to the people whom he called to their attention. There was evidently something absolutely abnormal in the whole thing, and it was the reason for this abnormality that I began to seek.