Father Gapon knows Aleksandra well, and not only because she’s his messenger’s sister. He knows she’s a favorite of Elizaveta Narishkina, the tsarina’s lady-in-waiting, a faithful member of the court and a Gaponist through and through, whom the reverend cultivates because she’s his direct line to the tsarina. This is a well-kept secret known only to his inner circle; there’s no need to make his alliance with Narishkina public. He’s so careful about this connection that even now he doesn’t want to pressure her to get the tsarina to intervene, to get the tsar to receive them. He doesn’t want to test the relationship.

In addition, Aleksandra grew up in an orphanage where Gapon literally reigned for many years. Gapon had been the priest in charge of the Second Orphanage of the Moscow–Narva Branch of the Society of Solicitude for Poor and Sick Children, the one people call the Blue Cross Orphanage, while also teaching at the Orphanage of Saint Olga. In return, he was awarded a church, which he quickly filled with followers, multitudes of the poor who went to listen to his moving sermons. Soon people who were interested in justice and political activists of all stripes started coming too. The way he celebrates the rites is approachable and moving, and his sermons whip people up into a frenzy. He lets his faithful sing their prayers to the tunes of popular songs and urges them to spend most of the service on their knees, which creates a feeling of belonging, of solidarity, of excitement, of fervor that’s religious but social, too, and, according to his detractors, borders on fanaticism.

He’s so magnetic that even nonbelievers attend his church, like the Social Democrat who was quickly converted to the cause, explaining that he’d never attended a religious service like Gapon’s: “He’s a true artist, he seems to see everything with his hypnotic, magnetic gaze, and to see through you, too, his face shining, his movements so gentle, so profound, his splendid baritone voice communicating a contagious enthusiasm. If he prays for the dead, we all weep, if he agitates for justice, we all thirst for justice, if he’s celebrating a birth or a marriage, the congregation laughs and cries with joy; I do, too, even though I don’t believe. When I see him, I can’t take my eyes off him, I want to keep on listening to him even if he repeats things we’ve all learned by heart over and over again. He’s a phenomenon, Gapon is a phenomenon.”