Alexandra Feodorovna held her breath at hearing those words. That scene before the shrine of Our Lady of Kazan was, no doubt, still vivid in her mind. "Are you absolutely confident of that?" she asked him in breathless suspense. "The truth hath already been revealed unto me. Therefore I know," was his reply. "I know--and I here tell thee, O Lady. The Imperial House will have a son and heir." That prophecy, duly fulfilled as it was later on, caused the Empress to regard the dissolute "saint" as a "holy" man. In that eventful hour at Tsarskoe-Selo the die was cast. The Empress had fallen irrevocably beneath the spell of the amazing rascal, and the death-knell of the Romanoffs as rulers had been sounded. When we backed out of the Empress's presence the peasant Ivan, who had introduced us, handed us over to the Tsar's chief valet, an elderly grey-bearded man in the Imperial livery, a man whose name we understood was Tchernoff, and who had been valet of the old Emperor Alexander III. The Starets left the palace full of extreme satisfaction, and indeed, when an hour later we were alone together in the train returning to Petrograd, he grinned evilly across at me, and said meaningly: "Alexandra Feodorovna did not forget our meeting at Kazan, though she did not allude to it. Ere long, though she is Empress, I intend that she shall sit at my feet and do my bidding!" And he chuckled within himself as was his peasant's habit when mightily pleased. Truly, that meeting with the Tsar's valet Tchernoff was quite as fateful to Russia as the meeting with the neurotic spiritualistic Empress herself. CHAPTER III THE POTSDAM PLOT DEVELOPS ABOUT a week after Rasputin's first audience of the Empress Alexandra, the Bishop Theophanus, confessor of the Imperial family, paid him a visit at the Poltavskaya. The Bishop, a big, over-fed man, had a long chat with the Starets in my presence. "Her Majesty was very much impressed by you, my dear Grichka," said the well-known cleric to the man who, having pretended to abandon his profligate ways, had parted his hair in the middle and become a pilgrim. "She has daily spoken of you, and you are to be commanded to audience with the Tsar. Hence I am here to give you some advice." The "holy" man grinned with satisfaction, knowing how complete had been the success of Stuermer's plans. At the moment Theophanus was in ignorance of the deeply laid plot to draw the Empress beneath the spell of the Starets whom the inferior classes all over Russia--as well as the well-to-do--believed was leading such a saint-like, ascetic life in imitation of Christ. Truly, Grichka dressed the part well, and gave himself the outward appearance of saintliness and godliness. Even the Bishop was bamboozled by him, just as Petrograd society was being mystified and electrified by the rising of "the Divine Protector" of Russia.