The crawling servility of the great nobles before the face of the Siberian peasant availed them little; they, the "salt of the Russian earth," were treated as so much chaff and trash!
A Prince Putiatin acted as the "court prospector" of candidates to canonisation, of miracles and sacred relics. Why, after the canonisation of Serafira Sadovski, he proposed to the Tsar and to the Tsaritsa six more newly discovered saints! It was only the great costs which drew from the Tsar the impatient exclamation: "It is our pleasure that there shall be no more saints after Serafim!"
The aristocrats were amusing themselves while serving at Court, unconscious of the tragic events that were about to be enacted and of the accounts to be settled. Outside the Court the representatives of the highest families lived their picturesque, sparkling, profligate life. True, there was no need to cringe before an evil-smelling peasant or other fortune-tellers, prophetesses and charmers, who were permanent guests at the Court of the Romanovs. They kept their "odd Thursdays," "secret Mondays," in dainty palaces, garçonières, or in the recesses of Villa Rodé, whose owner, M. Alfred Rodé, made the most exquisite preparations and watched over the proceedings of his guests with the mysterious smile of the Sphinx.
He is the man to write the secret history of the last year of the Romanov dynasty and of the fall of the
