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1916-1917] AN AMERICAN SPIRITIST
459
being merely a Boche agent. Upon this, I received a
telegram from M. Protopopoff himself—a telegram
couched in the most friendly terms—asking me "as
a personal service" to viser the passports of the
American. Then I got angry and I wrote
immediately to the Foreign Office to relate the story of the
"American," and to have it brought to the notice of
our military police at Torneo, in case—our refusal
notwithstanding—the "astral body of the medium should
wish to cross the frontier provided with a passport
issued by the spirit of the late Rasputin." Well, a
fortnight later the American came again to the Legation,
bringing a fresh telegram from Protopopoff, in which
the Minister expressed his keen regret at not being able
at once to summon the spiritist to him, in order to
profit by his excellent " advice," but hoping that this
would soon be possible. Obviously this was madness.
The reader may perhaps be wondering what had
happened to politics in all this, and what Russia’s
relations to Sweden were during these months. My
answer is that no one thought or concerned themselves
about those matters now. The Swedes themselves
appeared to consider all that was occurring in Russia
to be so serious and big with immediate consequences
that all steps and all action could and should be avoided
until the internal crisis which was upheaving the mighty
adjacent Empire had been settled in some way or other.
In Stockholm there was some information coming from
Swedish sources and from German sources which
represented the position in Russia as excessively precarious.
However, for a short time my attention was diverted
from my worries with regard to the internal affairs of
my country by an entirely unlooked-for incident or
rather apparition.
One morning towards the middle of January I was
rung up on the telephone. A voice asked me in Russian
if I was really M. Nekludoff ? " Yes, it is I; who is it
speaking?" "I am Rizov, the Bulgarian Minister to
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