Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/231

Rh the valour of her brave troops, and Russia forgot one by one the promises made to her new Allies, and did not come to her help. Then came the great retreat, fruit of the intrigues of traitors. Certain Russian generals had also joined the side of the traitors. Mackensen won easy laurels, and Sturmer, Protopopoff, Rasputin and Co. hoped that the great retreat and the invasion of Rumania would decide Nicholas II. to make that famous "separate peace." These tools of Germany, these creatures of the Kaiser's, hoping for its accomplishment, were delirious with joy.

Sturmer deceived his allies, talking loudly of "no separate peace," while, as is known, he was using all his energies in a contrary direction.

But if the Court and so many of the great ones of the earth knelt before Rasputin, they did not all do so, and the masses had no belief in him. They laughed at him, and this rascal, who knew more than anyone the blackness of his own soul, went about protected by a coat of mail, for he was not without anxiety as to what Fate had in store for him. If his days sometimes gave the illusion of a veneer of piety, his evenings were those of a libertine; and, if the women had gone mad about him, the fathers, husbands and brothers had a mortal grudge against him.

In Kerensky, a lawyer and a member of the Duma, all this vermin scented danger; they wished to be rid of him, aware that he knew