"He is a comedian," Michael said on receiving the news of the war, "a comedian who for a long time is going to make the whole world weep.... And to think that the fate of mankind should depend on such a man!..."
Michael Fedor considered himself as a being set apart from the rest of mankind. He lamented the war as something terrible for the rest, but which could not influence his own particular fate. Since a madness for blood had descended upon Europe, he would go on sailing distant seas. Thanks to his wealth he could keep beyond the margins of the struggle.
But times changed rapidly; life was not the same: all old values had lost their significance. In spite of her Russian flag, the Gaviota II found herself halted by some English torpedo boats and was forced to submit to a minute inspection. They could not believe that any one should be cruising for pleasure when all the seas had been converted into a battlefield. In the latitude of the Azores it became necessary to force the yacht's engines to escape from a German corsair.
Besides, fuel was getting scarce. The various coaling stations located here and there on the coast were reserved exclusively for the warships. Important news kept coming by wireless from far-off Paris, where the chief agent of the Prince was located. Communication had been broken off between the Paris office and the administrators of the Lubimoff fortune in Russia. No money was coming from there, and the French banks, with their vaults closed by the moratorium, were willing secretly to lend money to a millionaire like the Prince, but not in quantities sufficient to meet his current needs.
The yacht came to anchor in the port of Monaco, and Michael Fedor, on arriving in Paris, almost laughed, as though witnessing some preposterous change in the laws of nature. The heir of the Lubimoffs in need of money, and compelled to make an effort to obtain it—something he had never done in all his life! Here he was having to ask for loans at frightfully usurious rates, on the security of his distant and famous wealth, which for the first time was regarded somewhat contemptuously!...
When communications were reëstablished in an intermittent fashion between Western Europe and Russia—which was practically isolated—the administrator of the Prince gave a look of despair. The collections had been reduced eighty per cent.
"According to that, I am going to be poor?" asked Lubimoff, laughing, the news seemed so unbelievable and absurd.
It was very difficult to send money as far as Paris. Besides the rouble was decreasing in value at a dizzy rate. Millions on reaching France became mere hundred thousands. Mobilization had left the mines without workmen; there was no outlet for the produce; the peasants, seeing their sons in the army, refused to pay any money, and even to work. The Russian government, to keep as much money as possible at home, limited to small amounts the money sent to citizens residing abroad.
"The Czar putting me on a pension!" said the Prince in amazement. "A thousand or two thousand francs a month!... How absurd!"
But he did not laugh long. His anger against the Russian court, which had gradually been growing in his subconsciousness ever since his expulsion so long ago from Petersburg, now moved by a selfish impulse suddenly flared up. The Czar and his counselors, desirous of Russianizing all Eastern Europe, were responsible for the war. They certainly might have kept peace with Germany. Why disturb the peace of the world, for the sake of a little race of people in the Balkans?