longing which befell him in the expectancy o death, while sitting at the bedside of the Empress, who, surrounded by her daughters, was writhing in pain, he called out in ecstasy:
"Not a hair of yours shall fall to the ground as long as my pictures and dress shall be with you!"
It must have been true, because about the middle of 1916, after an attempt on Rasputin, the photographer Ocup received the order to call on him and to make seven large portraits of the "Old Man"—the Tsar's family consisted of seven members—to perform all the operations in the presence of Rasputin's secretary to whom the plates were also to be handed over.
At the same time news spread from the Tsarskoye Selo Palace which amazed everybody. One learnt that after a long conversation with the Empress and her daughters, Rasputin left the apartments of Alexandra in tears, and went into his room, where he changed his dress, to return afterwards carrying his black silk shirt torn into seven pieces.
His power rested upon mysticism, the exploitation of momentary moods, forebodings of an impending debacle, and the skilful handling of situations as they arose.
In Siberia, where Grishka was hated, to-day already, during the Bolshevist regime, people whisper:
"Rasputin was a dog, but. a strong, supernatural man. He foretold the Emperor Nicholas's black days that should follow his own death, and so it happened.
