Then Mikhalovsky explained that Misha’s man followed the lady—­up to the house, and that it was Maroossia.  Another one “listened in,” and understood from Maroossia’s and Baroness B’s. conversation, that my wife took the package to a certain Madame van der Huechts in Sestroretsk, on being told to do so by the Baroness, and that she did not know what there was in it, and even did not know who Madame van der Huechts was.

“You see, you boneheaded fool,” Mikhalovsky continued, “what was the danger?  If Misha had not succeeded in having his own man listen in, and do it quietly, all of this detective work, your Maroossia would be gone by this time.”  “But,”—­he continued, “now the case is closed, as far as your wife is concerned, and the only thing I wish to insist upon,—­is to get Maroossia out of here right now.  Furthermore, you should give her a scolding.”

I said it would not be omitted.

10.

Maroossia left for her father’s.  We certainly had some explanation!  She cried and felt indignant, and finally understood why I was so angry when the evening papers came out with the news of Baroness B’s arrest.  Then—­she understood that she never should do anything that was asked her “without her husband’s knowledge.”  The case, as Mikhalovsky says, is closed.

The last two or three evenings I spent with both Mikhalovskys.  They told me strange stories.  I simply cannot believe them.  First—­that the German staff sent Lenine here with a special message to some people now in power.  “We know all about it,” said Misha, “but the time is not yet ripe to act.”  Second—­that a certain person received a request not to touch Grimm, nor any of the communists.  Third—­the strangest—­to get the Tsar’s family out.  “All of this news would have been much fuller if only we could decipher some of this,”—­and Misha took out of his pocket and presented me with this strange slip of paper....

(missing)

...—­all of these crossings of the lines are words, or ciphers, or phrases, God knows what, and they must mean something very important for they were taken from members of this web, and stand in direct connection with our present, or rather our future, attitude.  But that is about as much as we know of it.

11.

I went to Cubat’s for luncheon, as the cook had to go to a meeting,—­how do you like that?—­and I do not regret it, for I learned much.

When I think of Cubat’s, Contant’s or the Hotel de France’s public before the war, and compare them with the present, I find the difference on the style of people simply enormous.  They never were here before,—­these types of men with eyes looking for quick money, for instantaneous riches, for some “affaires du ravitaillement militaire.”  Yesterday’s poor chaps, that would not know the difference between a cotelette and a jigot are ordering and easily eating things that it would take me some time to think of.  Democratisation of French cooking, or vulgarisation of exclusive tastes (?) which?