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i9i6] MURDER OF RASPUTIN 457
and upset the unsteady equilibrium on which,
nevertheless, the whole edifice of the State depended.
Towards the end of December, shortly before
Christmas, O.S., we learnt through the newspapers of
the assassination of Rasputin, effected in the Yussupoff
Palace, and the triumphant joy with which this deed
had been received by the entire Russian public, without
distinction of parties. As soon as the news had
spread in Petrograd there was loud jubilation; in the
theatres the National Anthem was played and sung; if
it had been possible thanksgiving-services would have
been held in the churches. The names of the principal
authors of the deed were on every one’s lips ; these
were : the Grand-Duke Dmitri (son of the Grand-Duke
Paul); Count Felix Sumarokoff-Elston,1 son-in-law of
one of the Emperor’s sisters; and M. Poushkevitch,
the hot-headed deputy of the Monarchist extreme Right
of the Duma —a sort of Russian Paul de Cassagnac—
whose sallies, violent outbursts, and offensive invectives
hurled at the Liberals had formerly filled the
scandal-records of the Assembly. Becoming wiser and enrolled
in the " sacred union " since the beginning of the war, he
had devoted himself to a most successful organisation
of Russian baths and of canteens for supplying the
front in special trains ad hoc.
But a few days later other news had come to trouble
all minds again: the Emperor summoned post-haste
from G.H.Q.; thorough search, by his orders, for
Rasputin’s body, which was found under the ice on the
Neva ; funeral given by the Emperor and Empress to
these odious remains ; the arrest and banishment to the
army operating in Persia of the Grand-Duke Dmitri;
the appeal against this sentence, signed by the whole
of the Imperial Family, headed by Queen Olga of
Greece (grandmother of the delinquent); the removal of
1 Son of the Princess Zenaida Yussupoff mentioned above, and sole
heir to the enormous fortune of the Yussupoffs. Count
Sumarokoff-Elston got his name from his father. The young man might have chosen
some other place than his mother’s palace in which to play Lorenzaccio !
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