had the accident on the Moscow railway and was asked to leave the Foreign Office a couple of years ago.  Now Petrov is with the communists.  Again the agent reported the presence of the 1905 blackhundreds.  They all are there, and instead the “Boje Tsaria Khrani,” they shout the International.  They all understand their people (the agent said) and they all are with the Lenine and others, to return to the sweet past by destroying the bitter present.  Sir George, the Major continued, knew all about these significant political blocks, and reported them to London, but the Foreign Office and the Conseil de Guerre seem to be either ignorant (I would not be very much surprised), or know more than the Ambassador, so, as yet, our Cabinet has not been warned.  Our Cabinet!  It sounds majestic....  Since Miliukov left, and the mercantile Monsieur Tereshchenko took his hot seat—­everything goes to the devil with our policy abroad.  It is strange, for Mr. Tereshchenko must be well posted in foreign relations:  both of his French twin mistresses gave him every possibility of becoming “bien verse.”

But—­oh, shades of Count Nesselrode and Prince Gorchakov!  Inspire the newcomer, looking from the walls of the Foreign Office, at his struggles!  Your illegitimate son needs your sense and help ...

7.

Since the scandalous discovery of the plot (Mr. Kerensky took personal care to make it scandalous)—­perhaps it was not a plot, but just a few letters of the Gr.  Duchess M.P., Tsarskoye Selo has become very difficult to reach and to visit.  A few days ago Maroossia came home from A. very late and so tired that I thought she was ill.  The communication seems completely stopped, and soldiers were looking in the automobile every five minutes.  Once she thought they would arrest her.  Sentinels not only around the Palace, but in the garden too, with a double chain of Reds on the streets!  The General told Maroossia that some one explained to him that these difficulties and impediments were provoked by the successes of the Germans on the Riga front, and that they expect a serious drive on Petrograd, and twice insinuated about her going to Yalta, or Gurzoof, or Gagry,—­as things there rapidly were becoming complicated.  So said the Admiral too, in his peculiar way:  “The rats before a shipwreck usually feel the coming wreck by instinct, and run on the decks.”  He said that was his impression in Tsarskoye.  Every rat is exceedingly nervous and tries to disappear from the Palace under some pretext or other, and the Palace is deserted.

Kerensky is coming there very often, usually with his milk-fed A.D.C....  This man wants to be generous, he wants to be square, in fact,—­he wants to be magnificent.  He calls the Emperor “Colonel Romanov,” or “Nikolai Alexandrovich.”  Never says, “Your Majesty.”  He feels sure that he is beloved in Tsarskoye, and that they speak of him with tears of gratitude, admiring his justice and his manners.  I hardly think Kerensky realizes that they are simply frightened, and feel with their inborn appreciation of the man, that by playing on his exceedingly well developed self-veneration—­they might be saved.