Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/222

196 by him, and if he had made dupes he had also reaped a great harvest of money. He pretended to collect for the monastery built by him in his native village, where the monks lived an austere and most ascetic life of prayer among the most luxurious surroundings, the fruit of the offerings collected by him.

From time to time he would threaten his "sister disciples" to leave the capital and return to the monastery, at hearing which they became desolate, and one and all implored him to remain.

The Empress, more than anyone, was petrified at the thought of what might happen, and all the more that, each time that Rasputin went away, a change for the worse was noticed in the health of the precious child.

This may be explained thus: Rasputin was well versed in the composition and effects of certain drugs known in the East, which he obtained from a great friend of his, an Oriental quack doctor, who gave to his patients infusions of herbs brought from Tibet, and he took care to have one of them administered to the Imperial child by Madame VryuboffVyruboff [sic] when he was absent. This, while making him ill, assured Rasputin's recall, and as may be imagined he was not anxious to cut short his brilliant career. Sometimes it happened that the drug brought the child apparently too near the gates of death. Hence the short despairing and heart-rending notes, of which so much has been said, addressed by a poor distracted mother to the "Saint"!