In 1903 Rasputin, then thirty-one, arrived in St, Petersburg and set himself up as a reformed drunkard and rake. He had already acquired a wife and three children, but he had left them behind in Siberia and he was gaunt and ascetic-looking from his wanderings. His phenomenal filth, his verminous rags and his burning eyes attested the sincerity of his repentance. He was accepted as a kind of hanger-on in a fashionable theological academy, and soon found himself some influential sponsors. They included Hermogen, the Bishop of Saratov, and a monk named Illiodor, who was regarded as a pious mystic
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