This campaign succeeded and Mr. Sturmer was appointed. His selection caused an outcry of indignation throughout the whole country, and distressed its best friends for more than one reason. But even among the functionaries of the Ministry, which had to accept him as its chief, there were found some rebellious spirits, among whom was the then Minister of the Interior, Mr. Chvostoff, who made up their minds that it was at last high time to get rid of Rasputin in some manner or other. He was also a reactionary, like Mr. Sturmer, and even a furious one. When he was still a deputy in the Duma he had been one of the leaders of the faction of the right and before that time had made for himself the reputation of being an ultraconservative in all the different administrative posts which he had occupied. Among others, he had been Governor at Nijni Novgorod for a short period. He belonged to the number of persons who held the opinion that Rasputin ought to be removed. But whether he was really a party to the extraordinary story I am going to relate is a matter about which I shall abstain from expressing an opinion. The fact is that about the beginning of the year 1916 people were startled by hearing of a new conspiracy against Rasputin, in which it was rumoured that the Minister of the Interior himself was a party. Things stood thus: A secret agent of the Russian police called Rgevsky, a man about as unscrupulous as Manassevitsch-Maniuloff but not so clever, who had already figured more than once in occasions when the need for a provocative agent had been felt, arrived in Christiania, in Norway, where the unfrocked monk Illiodore was living, and sought him out. His journey had been undertaken without the knowledge of the chief of the secret police, Mr. Bieletsky, but on the express orders of Mr. Chvostoff, the Minister of the Interior. Bieletsky, however, had suspected that some underhand game was going on, and had caused Rgevsky to be watched. When the latter had crossed the frontier at Torneo, he had been thoroughly searched and examined by special orders received from Petrograd, without, however, anything suspicious being found on him. When he was questioned as to the reasons for his journey abroad he had, in order to be allowed to proceed, to own that it was undertaken by command of the Minister of the Interior.