At the first stopping-place I left the train and boarded one which took me back to Paris. I found my mother much worse, and I begged the doctor to mention my name to no one.
I had engaged a nurse to watch over my mother. For two days I hid whenever anyone came, to such an extent did I feel myself in the hands of the Philistines.
When the train arrived at St. Petersburg and the electricians discovered that I was not there, more trouble ensued.
The Russian manager wired Paris, and I was unable to keep my secret any longer. This time, taking advantage of my ignorance both of the law and of the French language, they threatened to arrest me and imprison me if I did not start for Russia at once. All that was under the pretext that I had taken money in advance. I was actually accused of being a thief.
This whole scene took place in my mother’s presence. We were both nearly dead with fright. My mother begged me to go. With my heart full of bitterness, and my eyes sore from crying, I allowed myself to be dragged away a second time and placed in the train.
After my departure a young Englishwoman, whom I had met only once or twice, came to call at our appartement, and finding my mother very ill, went, on her own initiative, and summoned an English physician, Dr. John Chapman, who had attended us before, and whom she had met at our house. I had not called him because I supposed that the physician whom I had engaged would be just as competent to cure my mother sufficiently for her to be able to go with me to St. Petersburg.
Dr. Chapman arrived just at the moment when the French physicians (the doctor who was attending my mother had called three of his colleagues into consultation) had decided to give her a soporific on the ground that she was dying of pneumonia and that nothing could save her. The English doctor offered to attend my mother, and the Frenchmen retired when they learned that he was our regular physician.
Dr. Chapman inquired after me, and when he was informed about what had happened wired me all along the line, at each station where the train was scheduled to stop. He maintained that they ought never to have let me go.
Just as I reached the Russian border the telegram was brought to me: “Return at once. Your mother has very little chance of recovering.”
This was the first news to reach me since my departure, forty-eight hours before. It was six o’clock in the morning and still dark. I was in bed in the sleeping car and it was cold, as it can be cold only in Russia.