He foretold that the Romanovs would live as long as they should have with them his pictures and bits of his shirt—and they lived until the Commissar Yurovsky took all this away from them, when they were murdered. Strong, uncanny was Grishka! Antichrist! The servant of the devil!"
Several attempts were made on Rasputin's life, but without success. Two of them were most dangerous. One in Siberia, when the monk, Heliodor, sent a half-demented peasant woman, who inflicted several wounds on him with her knife. The wounds were rather serious, but Rasputin lived.
Another time, when he travelled in sledges from Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo together with Madame Wyrubova, the Empress's lady-in-waiting, the sledges were upset by an unknown motor-car, which succeeded in effecting its escape. Madame Wyrubova was seriously hurt, but Rasputin only slightly bruised.
At the head of the organisation which combated Rasputin were the Moscow Metropolitan Makar, the Bishop of Samara Pimen, and the monk Heliodor, supported by a band of influential and rich men belonging to the Nationalist circles.
After the last and successful attempt on the life of the spiritual director, the despondency of the Empress and her daughters was limitless. They even went into mourning for him. The body was buried in a magnificent chapel erected for the purpose In the Park of Tsarskoye Selo. Daily pilgrimages of the Tsar's fam-
