THERE is a well-known Latin proverb which says that the gods begin by depriving of their reason those whom they mean to destroy.

Never was its truth more forcibly illustrated than in the tragedy which brought about the fall of the autocratic system of government under which Russia had been suffering for centuries. Its last representative had incarnated in his person all the follies, the crimes, the mistakes, and the ruthless cruelty of his predecessors. Unlike them, he had not known how to temper them by personal authority or personal sympathy. He was an effeminate, degenerate descendant of strong ancestors; the whole atavism of a doomed race seemed to have become embodied in his weak individuality. If outside catastrophes had not occurred in his reign, it is still likely that he would have been compelled by a revolution of some kind or other to step back into an obscurity out of which he ought never to have emerged, because he was most certainly not able to bear the rays of the “fierce light which beats upon a throne.” It is, however, possible that none of those supreme calamities which destroy the independence and self-respect of nations as well as of individuals would have been connected with his name and history. But destiny condemned him to remain forever, in the annals of the world, a living proof of the degeneracy which threatens all royal houses who do not possess sufficient energy to stand in perfect union with their people whenever a trial of some kind comes to threaten their mutual existence.

It would have been hard enough to be branded by the centuries to come as the last of the Romanoffs and as an unworthy Heir of Peter the Great. It was worse than hard for Russia, even more than for Nicholas II., to have to realize that, through stupidity, weakness of character, and an exaggerated opinion of his own power and might, he had been the direct cause of the ruin of his country and the means of plunging it into an abyss of distress and of anarchy from which it will take the work of several generations to redeem it.

His wife was the instrument of his destruction. About this last point there cannot exist any doubt whatever. She had a character stronger than his and she could speak to him in the name of the son to whom they were both so completely devoted. She could also appeal to his religious and superstitious feelings, which, though not as exaggerated as her own and not quite so foolishly carried to extremes, were yet also devoid of sound common sense. They were connected with the conviction that he had a mission to perform in regard to the future of his subjects, and to their welfare both in this world and in the next. Nicholas II. had in his character something of the traits of Caligula and other Roman emperors—a mixture of cruelty and theatrical sentimentality combined with cowardice in presence of danger and indecision before immediate peril. He never knew what it meant to play the game, and he perished because he refused to fight it out on the day that he discovered his adversary held all the trumps.

In the mean while the war was going on, claiming every day new victims. The insufficiency of the Government to face its various problems became more patent. Instead of applying himself to the task of coping with them, the Czar became absorbed, thanks to the remonstrances of his wife, in the one thought of how to consolidate his own authority, reduce to silence the protestations of the country and those of its representatives in the Duma, and conclude a peace with Germany which would allow him to make an appeal to his troops to help him to crush once more the Revolution which was hammering at his door, which he imagined he could subdue as easily as he had annihilated the one that had broken out after the Japanese campaign.

These were splendid plans indeed, and the Empress was already rejoicing at their success, in ignorance of the revolt which was shaking public opinion out of its previous apathy, a revolt which had extended itself to her own family. Bad as were most of the Grand Dukes, dissolute as their conduct had ever been, yet they had in their veins the blood of Catherine the Great and of all the dead and gone Romanoffs. They rose in rebellion against the gang of adventurers who were dishonoring the chief of their race and of their dynasty.

By that time the name of the Empress was being dragged in the dirt by every street boy, and open comments were made in public places in regard to her friendship, not to call it by another name, for Raspoutine—comments which were devoid of truth, because there was never any immorality in their relations, but which were generally believed, perhaps, because it would have been impossible for any one to guess that it was through superstitious practices that the “Prophet” had contrived to get absolute hold of her mind.

The Imperial Family felt the degradation to which this common peasant had reduced it, and though they had no reason in the world to like Nicholas II., yet they resented the humiliation which any slur upon the reputation of his wife conferred upon him as well. After all, Alexandra Feodorowna was the mother of the future Czar, and as such she ought to inspire respect in the Russian nation. If she did not realize this fact herself, others had to do it for her and rid her of a contact which was a slur. Besides, there was the hope that if once the adventurer was removed she could be brought to look upon the world from a more reasonable point of view. The principal thing was to deliver her from this evil adviser who was fast leading her, as well as the dynasty, to inevitable destruction and ruin.

The story of Raspoutine’s assassination is too well known to be repeated here. At any time it would have broken the heart of the poor, misguided Czarina. But coming at the moment it took place, it did something more—it deprived her of what she considered to be her only moral support amid the troubles of her life, the possibility of communicating with the spirit of the man whom she had loved, who she felt sure was watching over her and over her child, from the heavens.

In the weeks preceding the murder of the “Prophet” he had subjected the Empress almost every evening to the agony of these prayer-meetings during which he communicated to her the so-called wishes of her dead friend, who, as he said, advised her, through his medium, as to what she ought to do to avert the dangers which were hovering over her head. The miserable woman used to listen to these revelations with anxious eagerness, and pray, pray, with a fervor she had never known before, for the strength to obey the commandments of a spirit who in death, as well as in life, had proved to be her best, and indeed her only, friend. Is it a wonder that the last remnants of sanity which were still left to her snapped under this terrible strain, and that at last she became the mere shadow of her former self, a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, where, indeed, she ought, for the good of everybody, to have been confined?

Her conduct after she had been told of the murder of the creature whom she revered as a Prophet of God was quite in accord with her character, such as it had developed itself through all the years during which she had allowed her mind to be invaded with superstitious notions, which would have been laughable if they had not been so pathetic. Her only thought was that of vengeance. She exercised it with a relentlessness which set against her the few people left in Petrograd who might have felt inclined to take her part and to pity her in this tragedy of her life. She left no peace for the Czar until he had exiled the persons whom she knew to have been the authors of the deed. When she was implored to take pity on the young Grand-Duke Dmitry, and not have him sent to the Persian front, where there existed so many epidemics that it was hardly likely he would ever come back again, she had merely smiled and coldly said:

“Why should I pity him? He did not pity others.”

And yet public feeling was so strong against her, and so entirely in favor of those who had had the courage to rid Russia of a man who had proved so fatal to it, that the schemes of revenge of Alexandra Feodorowna suffered a collapse. Mighty and powerful as Nicholas II. believed himself to be, yet he understood that the best thing he could do would be to let silence and oblivion fall over a crime that was eminently popular in the whole country. He had heard of the telegrams of congratulation, and of the flowers which had been sent to both his cousin Dmitry Pawlowitch and to the husband of his niece, young Prince Youssoupoff, as well as the joy to which the population of Petrograd had given way when it had become aware of the fate of the adventurer whose name had been so prominently and so sadly associated with that of the Empress of All the Russias. Perhaps at heart he was not so very sorry at an event which had certainly rid him of a great incumbrance.

Nicholas II. had always practised dissimulation to a considerable extent, and he had never allowed outsiders to guess what was going on in his mind. During the days which followed upon the disappearance of Raspoutine he certainly expressed great sympathy for the grief of his wife, but at the same time he did not, as she expected, cause the perpetrators of the murder of this low adventurer to be prosecuted publicly for their daring action. This apathy exasperated Alexandra Feodorowna.

During the last weeks of Raspoutine’s life he had been working, conjointly with Sturmer and Protopopoff, toward convincing her to lend herself to a Palace revolution which would have overturned her husband and made little Alexis Czar under her own Regency. She had been told over and over again that she possessed all the great talents of Catherine II., that the Emperor was not a better man than Peter III. She had been made acquainted with his unpopularity, but at the same time persuaded that this unpopularity was a purely personal thing and that it did not extend itself to the person of the Heir to the Throne, nor even to her own. As Regent she could do any amount of good, and conclude peace with Germany the more easily that she was not bound by the terms of the agreement entered into by Mr. Sazonoff with the Entente, in the name of Nicholas II.

The foolish woman believed absolutely all the nonsense which was being constantly poured into her ears. Her ambition and lust for revenge over her enemies also played a part in this whole tragedy. She therefore began wondering whether, after all, she ought not to follow the advice which she had received from Heaven, as she fondly imagined, through the mouth of Raspoutine. She would have liked to be able to consult once again the spirit of Colonel Orloff so as to relieve her perplexity, because she had still sufficient scruples to hesitate before allowing those whom she considered to be her friends to use her name for the execution of a Palace revolution directed against her own husband, whom she may not have loved, but whom she still respected as the Czar of All the Russias.

It is at this juncture that a new incident occurred, the real details of which have never yet transpired. Raspoutine, just before he had been murdered, had introduced to the Empress a Tibetan doctor with whom he was on terms of intimate friendship, telling her that he was a man of great ability, devoted to occult sciences, had studied them in the convents of his country, and who was quite able to perform miracles. This man, whose name was Badmaieff, certainly saw Alexandra Feodorowna several times, and it was reported that he gave her certain drugs which he told her she ought to administer to the Emperor in secret, drugs which would make him quite subservient to her will. Whether she used them or not it is impossible to say. Young Prince Youssoupoff declared immediately after the Revolution that she had done so, and that in consequence of this experiment Nicholas II.’s will, which had always been a weak one, had completely disappeared, until he had been reduced to the condition of a puppet in the strong hands of his wife. But this assertion, coming as it did from a personage who could not have nursed kind feelings in regard to the Empress, must be accepted with caution.

It is a fact, however, that those in attendance on the Sovereign remarked more than once that he seemed at times to have lost the real consciousness of what was going on around him, that his eyes had acquired a vague, dazed look they had never worn before.

It is out of this introduction of Badmaieff into the intimacy of the Czarina that the rumor arose that Raspoutine, together with Anna Wyrubewa, had tried to administer slow poison to the small Grand-Duke Alexis. Such a thing had never taken place, and indeed it could never have occurred if one considers the fact that the strongest trump in the game played by the pro-German agents who were leading Russia to its ruin was precisely the little Cesarewitsch, without whose existence it would have been impossible for them to think of making out of Alexandra Feodorowna a Regent of the Russian Empire. They had, therefore, the greatest interest in keeping the child in as good a state of health as possible, and he was far too delicate for them to try any experiment upon him. On the other hand, the necessity of getting rid by natural means of the Czar himself was so evident that it would not be surprising if the superstitious mind of his Consort had been influenced so as to persuade her to lend herself to what she had been told was nothing but a religious practice, but which in reality was an attempt to accomplish by this means what it would perhaps not have proved wise to try and bring about in another way.