Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [86]
She: “Dec. 14th.… Scarcely slept this night again.… Trepov was very wrong in putting off the Duma now & wishing to call it beginning of January again, the result being … nobody goes home & all will remain, fomenting, boiling in Petrograd.… Lovy, our Friend begged you to shut it 14th … & you see, they have time to make trouble.… Be Peter the Great, John [Ivan] the Terrible, Emperor Paul—crush them all under you—now don’t laugh, naughty one—but I long to see you with all those men.… ‘Do not fear,’ the old woman said & therefore I write without fear to my agoo wee one.”
Her constant pressure had kept him on the brink. Now she had gone too far.
He: “14 December, 1916.… Tender thanks for the severe written scolding. I read it with a smile, because you speak to me as though I was a child.”
She: “Dec 15th 1916.… Please, forgive me for my impertinent letters, but writes from deepest love—& sometimes driven to exasperation, knowing one cheets you & proposes wrong things.… Wish the telephone were not so bad.”
He: “16 December, 1916.… No, I am not angry with you for the other, written by you. I perfectly understand your desire to help me! But I cannot change the day for the reassembly of the Duma, because the day is already fixed in the Proclamation.… Tender greetings and kisses sends to you Your ‘poor, weak-willed little hubby.’ ”
Yes, this time he was implacable.
She: “Dec 17th 1916.… Again very cold & gently snowing.… Heart is not famous & don’t feel well. You see my heart for some time was bad again.… The moral strain of these last trying months on a weak heart of course had to tell … the old machine broke down.… Has Baby’s ‘worm’ quite been got rid of? Then he will get fatter & less transparent—the precious Boy!”
The end of her letter was finished in pencil—after she learned of what was for her the most dreadful event possible:
“We are sitting together—you can imagine our feelings—thoughts—our Friend has disappeared. Yesterday A[nya] saw him & he said Felix [Prince Yusupov] asked him to come in the night, a motor wld. fetch him to see Irina.—A motor fetched him (military one) with 2 civilians & went away. This night big scandal at Yousupov’s house—big meeting, Dmitrii [Pavlovich, Nicholas’s cousin], Purishkevich [Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich, extremely right-wing Duma member], etc all drunk. Police heard shots, Purishkevich ran out screaming to the Police that our Friend was killed. Police searching & Justice entered now into Yusupov’s house—did not dare before as Dmitrii there. Chief of police has sent for Dmitrii. Felix wished to leave to-night for Crimea, [I] begged Protopopov to stop him. Our Friend was in good spirits but nervous these days & for A[nya] too, as Batiushin [the military investigator handling the case of the German spies] wants to catch things against Ania. Felix pretends he never came to the house & never asked him. Seems quite a paw. I still trust in God’s mercy that one has only driven Him off somewhere.… We women are alone with our weak heads. Shall keep her [Anya] to live here—as now they will get at her next. I cannot & wont believe He has been killed. God have mercy. Such utter anguish.… Come quickly—nobody will dare to touch her or do anything when you are here.”
They had been plotting Rasputin’s murder for a long time. The large Romanov family saw it as the sole means of saving the dynasty. And the Holy Devil knew about it. When the clouds had thickened, he made a brilliant move, as always. He composed a will and prophecy, which he showed to the tsaritsa.
The “Spirit of Grigory Rasputin Novykh” promised:
“Russian Tsar!
“… Know, that if your relatives commit murder, then not one of your family, i.e., your relatives and children, will live more than two years.… The Russian people will kill them.… They will kill me. I am no longer among the living. Pray. Pray. Be strong. Worry