Baroness B., whom I had seen very much lately, talked to me for a while in a corner, to the ridiculous anger of Maroossia who went to bed tonight without kissing me.  She (the Baroness) said that Sophie had already reached London after the stay in Copenhagen and Paris.  “Her mission,” she said,—­as usual coquettishly and childishly looking around with a fear of being overheard,—­“was a failure.”  In Copenhagen “they would not even listen”, to Sophie, and she was told that the solution and the “demarches” must be made, if made, from London, as there people have every means to arrange with Berlin.  I asked the Baroness to keep all of this news to herself, and not to drag me, or what would be worse, Maroossia, into any conspiracy.  “Be just as you are and don’t try to become more serious, it may spoil you”—.  Heavens knows what the Baroness has become since her peculiar conduct with the Vassilchikov and her permanent whisperings to Madame Vyrubov and the rest of the gang.  But still, there was already a movement about Tsarskoe Selo.  If I were not so particular about avoiding silly conversations, I would have asked her what she meant by communicating Sophie’s failure to me.

Finally, I am glad, I did not ask her questions.  What is the use of the Emperor’s release to me?  A man who did not know how to pick his advisors, who did not know how to arrange his home affairs, his Alice von Hessen Darmstadt, his monks and his generals, does not deserve to be too much regretted, and certainly does not deserve too particular interest.  Baroness B’s. actions are strange.  Is she paid?  By whom?  Cash?  Promises?...

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... was stopped by me and slightly pursed her red lips, we joined the rest, where a British Major (I never can think of his name) was telling of his experiences in the research work for German propaganda in Petrograd.  So sorry he had to speak French with his typical Anglo-Saxon struggles with “D” and “T,” that makes French so perfectly ununderstandable in an English mouth.  It is horrid that people like the Ivanitskys don’t know English well enough, and now, when we all have to be among our British allies, we make ourselves, and the allies as well, simply ridiculous!

So the Major explained that their man was at several meetings of a body, which he called “Le conseil secret du parti bolchevique” (that must have been something very bad indeed), where a man by name Lenine was present, also communists Bronstein, Nakhamkes, Kohan, Schwarz and others, I forget.  They all are conspiring.  “Be no war with our brethren,” “Be peace on earth,” “Closer together peasants and soldiers, workingmen and poor,” “To hell with the intelligentzia,” “Long live the International,” etc., etc., was all we saw on the banners lately.  The queerest thing is that the British agent at the meeting saw amongst the anarchists several men from the police, and a fellow by name of Petrov, the same one that