"… 'Cremated, Ha! Ha!… why, did you notice those stoves in the house?… They're not big enough to burn up a good-sized dog!… My judgment tells me that that whole squad of double-crossers are in league with that skunk of a "Captain" who pretended to be a friend of Comrade Trotsky.'… 'Well, we made a mistake when we endorsed that BURNING lie,—we are ALL in for it NOW, and the only way to get out of it is to STAY IN IT and lie it out to the end—'…. 'UNLESS—' 'Unless what?'… 'Unless the Lett who pretended to do the killing is taken out and SHOT!'… 'Oh, give him a little more rope and he'll hang himself!'… When I related this conversation to my 'prisoner' he was very much amused…. 'This is a real adventure!' he smiled. 'We're like Tennyson's Light Brigade, with cannons in front, and cannons behind us and brigands on every side of us, thirsting for our blood,—these fellows are certainly not Russians!'…"
34. Then we have this entry:
"I have noticed all day that the family is gradually succumbing to the ravages of hunger and thirst…. If we call for help it will mean a FIRING SQUAD for sure…. The criminal crew who have already reported our death will HAVE to KILL us to make good their boast…. So we must stay here and silently watch one another collapse from day to day….
"… My prisoner says he is willing to give himself up if his death will enable the rest of us to escape…. The girls will not listen to such a proposition,—they are all agreed that they would rather organize themselves into a little platoon and FIGHT IT OUT if we can ever get out of this cistern…. It indicates a mighty good spirit,—but that gang outside would have us strung up in the twinkling of an eye….
"… I KNOW that Marie expects ME to do something from the inquiring way she gazes in my eyes…. She says nothing, but any man of spirit who looks into such clear, unflinching eyes under conditions such as these, will understand instinctively what is written in their suggestive depths!… They literally SHAME me for the little I can do…. Some lounge lizards may speculate on the nature of the sentiments this grateful princess will reveal if I display sufficient ingenuity to save us all from this slowly approaching DEATH!… How dramatic!… How absurd!
"… I have lately laughed at those Italian poets who bewail the isolation of their Lauras, yet, recalling my Lady Buckingham's repeated rescues, I begin to recognize a reason for the existence of that poetic fervor which agitates the artistic heart when either its safety or its vanity is at stake."…
35. This entry offers a little encouragement:
"There is no such thing as physical exhaustion…. Hunger and thirst may weight us down, but with the right kind of inspiration a man can do miraculous things…. I began rolling up balls of mud from the tunnel and carrying them into the cistern until my tongue hung out of my mouth…. With those balls I started making a winding stairway around the wall of this cistern until I had a dozen steps completed … then the girls began making the balls and bringing them in to me like muddy little hod-carriers…. My masonry took on proportions as the minutes dragged by…. Finally we have a stairway four feet wide and extending from the bottom to within four feet of the top as I write these lines with the girls sitting a few steps below me in the slowly hardening clay…. We can all hear plainly the tramping of feet on the planking overhead…. It is a kind of shuffling one hears when seated somewhere beneath the dancers in a ballroom, and it may mean that we are headed directly toward the LION'S DEN."…
36. In this entry the Emperor speaks of Rasputin, spooks and Jews:
"It became dark and spooky when our lights gave out…. and while we sat huddled together the subject of 'ghosts' came up…. 'Ghosts!' the 'prisoner' almost snarled; 'that reminds me of the Jewish propaganda against my Government…. There was hardly a Yiddish banker in the world who did not accuse ME personally of inspiring Sheglovitov to have the Jews executed for ritualistic murder; and I am sure their influence will be very strong with certain statesmen and opportunists to have my Empire dismembered when the time comes to settle the terms of peace, as poor Nilus predicted…. I wish I could show you a letter I received from a Jewish banker in New York threatening to kill my loan in America and have our existing treaties denounced unless I complied with certain Jewish demands…. I did not think it possible and ignored the letter, of course…. You may judge of my astonishment when the Jew's threat was made good by the American Government doing precisely what the threat implied…. These people have been persistent in accusing ME of having communication with the spirits and of engaging in all sorts of magic, like the infamous Papus; well, if that be so let me exercise my gifts to prophesy that the denationalized Jews will attempt to hereafter enthrone themselves as MASTERS of the civilized world by their mastery of its amusements, its money, its POLITICS and its industry,—and you will find them demanding and RECEIVING special privileges in many countries where, at present, they are suspected and abhorred…. I have not the slightest doubt but that Kerensky will be succeeded by some Jewish politician within a little while—and they will blacken his reputation as they have tried to blacken mine…. the methods may be different but the result will be none the less effectual…. Only the other day, I might say, WHEN WE WERE LEAVING TUMEN, a rabble of Yiddish suttlers began yelling at ME: "Rasputin! Rasputin! where is your Rasputin!" … Now Grisha Rasputin was a friend of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Protopopov. He was seeking to redeem the reputation of a horse-stealing father if I remember right—'He was a friend of Stuermer, Niki, not a friend to you,' interrupted the ex-Empress… 'You are right, darling,' returned the 'prisoner,' 'quite right, I know.'… 'What kind of a mountebank was RASPUTIN?' I asked to feel my 'prisoner' out…. 'He was a worthless rasputnik at best,' the fallen Emperor answered…. And you think the Jews are responsible for your reported attachment to him?' I asked…. 'Undoubtedly,' he said bitterly with a sigh of resignation…. 'When we were being taken to the boat at Tobolsk did they not make faces at me and Alice and flout me with their cries: "Take him to the Criminal Court and let him read the record of his libertine, Rasputin! Let his Barnabas teach him how to sin for the joy of gaining absolution!"… How little do those enfranchised Jews understand the meaning of forgiveness!' lamented the ex-Czar…. 'May I ask your actual estimate of creatures like Rasputin?' I ventured…. 'Our Rasputin was a hardened criminal beyond a doubt until his conversion by Father Zaborovsky, the good Rector at the Theological Academy at Tomsk,' the ex-Czar replied…. 'He would have made an excellent subject for investigation by Lombroso, by Havelock Ellis or other eminent criminologists … but I believed the man was sincere in his repentance and accepted him as a sort of text for other sinners to point a way toward regeneration…. The higher Rasputin rose, the greater his fame became, the more impressive would be his textual example to other aspiring souls,—even a criminal should not be denied the consolation of hope where crime is the result of ignorance or misdirected patriotism…. If I sinned in pardoning a sinner then sin must be an unpardonable crime!… Nathan treated David as I treated Rasputin, although both were guilty of the same offense…. He was grossly illiterate,—the only schooling he ever got was in the Monastery Abalaksky and what he acquired from the lips of monks while making his rounds as a barefoot pilgrim from place to place…. His claims of having visions I ascribed to his empty stomach, although others gave credence to the nonsense…. Alice at first abhorred him; finally she began to regard him as a rare specimen in self-hypnosis who was worth studying to learn how far the fascinations of self-delusion were capable of deluding and swaying stronger wills and more cultivated minds…. We both learned, by observing him, that an ignorant mujik, like an egotistical Minister, if granted the semblance of authority for any length of time, will demoralize the finest organization in the world…. That was the lesson both Alice and I acquired from Rasputin…. And I am accepting Rasputin as a standard to estimate what will happen when men of his type and origin attempt the government of the world…. Without education, with no experience in governing even the smallest unit of society, unfamiliar with the trend of history, ignorant of military and commercial strategy, building their philosophy of life and their science of administration upon some isolated text, they will overturn the whole structure of civilization by arrogating to themselves the supernatural privileges and persuasiveness of the Voice of God!… The prospects are not inviting…. There are Rasputins in all the chancellories of Europe…. You have them in North and South America,—some educated, others like Marat and Danton, while some are simple Cagliostros who deceive the people and themselves…. If they were only Gideons instead of Joshuas their strategy might be reassuring,—but they are merely Rasputins and Papuses, after all!… Against all laws of nature they will try to triumph by commanding the heavenly and mundane bodies to stand still until they readjust the motions of civilized society to some dissolving and ruinous invention of emotional insanity where everything runs wild!'"