"Please omit your insinuations and sarcasm, you bad thing. I only see you are not patriotic, or you have something personal against me."
"You can judge better than others on this last point. It looks to me as though you were wrong about the rest, however….
(a page torn out)
"… I saw Tatiana (don't ask me questions, if you please!) and the girl said that there are only two acceptable ways: to be released by the will of the people, or taken against their will, a kidnapping staged. Other methods will meet with a refusal. That is why the Emperor refused a formal foreign intervention, for it would place them in a position of parasites with the "ex" title. After everything is through—all of your Kerenskys—a parasite could not be popular and desirable…. Well, she got up,—"goodby! Kiss Maroossia for me. And here is a friendly warning: don't talk. It is dangerous. Don't trust. It is silly. Write to Sophie's house in Paris—it will reach me. So sorry we cannot be together!"
She left me.
15.
Saw a real picture of the time: General S-sky in the Renault with Joffe! Smiles and hand-shakes. Red arm-bands. The tall Dolivo-Dobrovolsky from the Foreign Office was with this couple. In January, when S-sky got his car he said: "I'd rather sell the car than let a Jew ride in it," when Gunzburg asked to use the automobile.
Madame D's apartment was robbed. Nobody knows "how it happened." The house guard keeps silent on the subject. Paul sent her a wire to Kursk, very laconic: "home emptied everything stolen." Now he received a reply: "Sublet unfurnished." She is a darling. Never saw such energy. I wonder whether she is trying to get the Emperor out too?…
16.
My interview with his Excellency is worthy of description. Since my graduation from the Lyceum up to the present time—I have seen many men of power; when young—they usually knocked me down by their aureole of magnificence; with age I learned how to distinguish almost unmistakably in the splendor of that scenery an idiot from a crook. This one—was quite peculiar.