This momentous journey to Berlin was undertaken partly on account of the representations of Rasputin to the Empress, whose love for peace was very well known. Europe had just gone through the anxiety caused by the Balkan crisis, and it was repeated everywhere in St. Petersburg that a demonstration of some kind had to be made in favour of peace in general and also to prove to the world that the great Powers were determined not to allow quarrels in Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece to trouble the security of the world. The marriage festivities of which Berlin became the theatre at the time seemed a fit opportunity for this demonstration. The bureaucratic circles in the Russian capital and the influence of Rasputin were used to bring about this trip of the Czar. Rasputin was thus fast becoming a personage, simply because it suited certain people--the pro-German party, to use the right word at last--to represent him as being important. They pushed things so far that many ministers and persons in high places refused on purpose certain things which were asked of them and which were absolutely easy for them to perform simply because they wished Rasputin to ask for them for those who were weary of always meeting with a non possumus in questions for which they required the help of the Administration. Rasputin’s various intermediaries, through whom one had to pass before one could approach him, sold their help for more or less large sums of money, and thus began a period of vulgar agiotage, to use the French expression, of which Russia was the stage, and Rasputin, together with the men who used him, the moving spirits. I very nearly said the evil spirits. But of this, more later on. CHAPTER V I must now make one remark which is absolutely necessary in order to enable the foreign readers to understand how the numerous legends which were connected with Rasputin and the influence of the latter on the course of public affairs could come to be accepted by the nation at large. One can seek its principal reason in the tendency which the Russian government has cultivated since immemorial times to forbid the open discussion of certain things and facts. At the time about which I am writing present military censorship did not exist, and there was no war which could have justified the control by the government of the publication by the daily press of the current events of the day. Yet the censors did not allow any mention of Rasputin to be made in any organ of publicity. Thanks to this senseless interdict, it helped the invention of the most unbelievable tales concerning him and the attitude which he had adopted in regard to state affairs, with which he had begun to occupy himself, much to the dismay of those who had by that time learned to appreciate the fact that the “Prophet” was but the plaything of men far cleverer than himself and 50,000 times more dangerous.