CHAPTER PAGE 1. RASPUTIN MEETS THE EMPRESS 1 2. RASPUTIN ENTERS TSARSKOE-SELO 19 3. THE POTSDAM PLOT DEVELOPS 36 4. THE MURDER OF STOLYPIN 53 5. THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE 68 6. RASPUTIN IN BERLIN 85 7. SCANDAL AND BLACKMAIL 100 8. RASPUTIN THE ACTUAL TSAR 116 9. THE TRAGEDY OF MADAME SVETCHINE 132 10. TRAITOROUS WORK 148 11. POISON PLOTS THAT FAILED 163 12. RASPUTIN AND THE KAISER 180 13. THE "PERFUME OF DEATH" 197 14. MILIUKOFF'S EXPOSURE 214 15. THE TRAITORS DENOUNCED 229 CHAPTER I RASPUTIN MEETS THE EMPRESS THE Spanish author Yriarte wrote those very true words: "_Y ahora digo yo; llene un volumen_ _De disparates un Autor famoso,_ _Y si no alabaren, que me emplumen._" For those who do not read Spanish I would translate the passage as: "Now I say to you; let an author of renown fill a book with twaddle, and if it is not praised by the critics, you may tar and feather me." I am not an author of renown. Indeed, I make no pretence of the delicacies of literary style, or the turning of fine phrases of elegant diplomacy. My object is merely to record in these pages the truth regarding the crumbling of Russia, and the downfall of our Imperial Throne. Anyone who cares to search the voluminous records in the Bureau of Police in the long Bibikovsky Boulevard, in Kiev, will find my _dossier_ neatly filed and tabulated, as are those of most Russians. You will find that I, Feodor, son of Feodor Rajevski, musician temporarily abroad, and his wife Varvara, was born in the Via Galliera, at Bologna, in Italy, on July 8, 1880, and on March 3, 1897, entered the University in the Vladimirskaya. I venture to think that the police have but little inscribed to my detriment save perhaps a few students' pranks in the Kreshtchatik, and the record of that memorable night when we daubed with blue and white paint the equestrian statue in front of the Merchants' Club, and I was fined twenty roubles by the bearded old magistrate for the part I played in the joke. Had there been anything serious against me I doubt whether I should have occupied, as I did for some years, the post of confidential secretary to "Grichka," that saintly unwashed charlatan whose real name was Gregory Novikh, and whom the world knew by the nickname of "Rasputin."