Neither the Czarina nor even the prudish Anna Vyrubova — though the latter often witnessed the beginning of some queer evening entertainments at Rasputin’s — could be brought to believe, or at least to admit, that the starets ever behaved like anything but a saint “Read the Apostles; they kissed everybody as a form of greeting,” declared Alexandra in refuting the scandalous tales about her favorite. When the Czarevitch’s nurse accused Rasputin of having seduced her the Czarina dismissed it as an hysterical delusion.
