The next day the Tsaritsa was delivered of a son.
The fate of Russia wavers between those two children, the son and the grandson of the Tsar.
November 1.
I went in to the Tsarevitch last evening to talk over my departure for Germany. He sat near the lighted stove and was thrusting in burning papers, letters and manuscripts. He is probably afraid of some search.
He was holding in his hand and was just about to throw into the fire a small booklet in a well worn leather binding, when—I am even now amazed at my presumption—I inquired what it was. He handed it to me. I looked inside. It was his diary and notes. The ruling passion of women in general, and of myself in particular, is curiosity. It made me be guilty of a still greater presumption, I asked if I might borrow it to read.
He thought for a minute, then looking at me, and with his sweet child-like smile of which I am so fond:
“Quid pro quo—I read your diary, you can read mine.”
He made me promise that I would never talk to anybody about these notes and would return them to be burnt on the morrow. I have sat up the whole night with them; the booklet itself is really an old Russian calendar, a church calendar printed at Kiev. It had been given to the Tsarevitch by the late Metropolitan of Rostov, Demetrius, who is counted a saint by the people. The Tsarevitch had put down his thoughts and the events of his life partly on the margin and the blank spaces on the pages, partly on separate leaflets either simply inserted or pasted in.
I decided to make a copy of the diary.
I will not break my word, during my lifetime and his. Nobody shall know about his notes. But they must not be irrevocably lost.