If we consider who were the people at the side of the “Prophet,” and who inspired all his actions as well as his utterances we find police agents, adventurers who had been sometimes in prison, and sometimes in exile; functionaries eager to obtain some fat sinecure in which they might do nothing and earn a great deal; stock exchange speculators of doubtful morality and still more doubtful honesty; women of low character and army purveyors, mixed up with an innumerable number of spies. Most of these last were in the German service and were working for all that they were worth to bring about some palace conspiracy or some popular movement capable of removing from his throne a Czar whose honesty and straightforwardness of character precluded the possibility of Russia betraying the trust which her Allies had put in her. Yet this was precisely what these people wanted, and what they had made up their minds to force through, thanks to the indignation which the various stories which were being repeated every day concerning Rasputin and the favour which he enjoyed was arousing all over Russia. The Emperor, of course, knew nothing of all this; the Empress even less. There was no one to tell them the truth, and they would have been more surprised than any one else had they suspected the ocean of lies which had been told concerning themselves, and concerning the kindness with which they had treated a man whom they considered as being half saint and half mad, but of whom they had never thought in their wildest dreams of making their chief adviser.