Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/219

Rh To the most depraved morals he joined a great love of vodka.

After having tried theft several times, and been sentenced to two or three terms of imprisonment, the luminous idea dawned on him one fine day to pose as a saint, thinking the occupation would be more lucrative. He therefore embarked on the life of one of those wandering monks living on alms and of whom I have already spoken.

From the depths of those strange steel-grey eyes came a light endowed with an enormous magnetism, amounting to hypnotism, it seems, and he practised this power on nearly all the women whom he met irrespective of age, surroundings, disposition, bent of mind—whether light or austere.

Naturally he employed this power to surround himself principally with women in the best society, and also with those endowed with large fortunes, this being at the same time more flattering and more practical.

The new religion, if one may so describe the lax and too easy doctrine that he preached, was, I am told, a mixture of those "religions" that flourished in the Middle Ages, and appealed to that milieu enormously. He went so far as to preach that a laxity of morals should be regarded as the sin most easily pardoned by the Almighty and women of the best-known families and those placed in the highest position were present incognita at these "religious" services.