Madame D’s apartment was robbed.  Nobody knows “how it happened.”  The house guard keeps silent on the subject.  Paul sent her a wire to Kursk, very laconic:  “home emptied everything stolen.”  Now he received a reply:  “Sublet unfurnished.”  She is a darling.  Never saw such energy.  I wonder whether she is trying to get the Emperor out too?...

16.

My interview with his Excellency is worthy of description.  Since my graduation from the Lyceum up to the present time—­I have seen many men of power; when young—­they usually knocked me down by their aureole of magnificence; with age I learned how to distinguish almost unmistakably in the splendor of that scenery an idiot from a crook.  This one—­was quite peculiar.

Kerensky made me wait for about one hour during which I had enough time to ascertain that since the new regime the rooms had not been dusted.  So what Kerensky said to some foreigner:  “Regenerated Russia will not have recourse to the shameful methods utilized by the old regime”—­were untruthful words.  The dust evidently was old regime’s.

At the end of the hour (it was enough for Kerensky!) I decided to go home and mail the resignation.  When I got up, however, one of his men (the young rascal was watching me, I am sure) entered and asked me to step in.  The staging of the reception was prearranged and intended to impress the visitor; on the desk of the Minister I saw maps and charts, specimens of tobacco for the soldiers, designs of the new scenery for the Mariinsky Theatre, models of American shells, foreign newspapers, barbed wire scissors, etc., etc., just to show the newcomer the immense range of His Excellency’s occupations and duties.  When I stepped in, Kerensky looked at me, posing as being exceedingly fatigued in caring for the benefit of others.  He almost suffered!  He never looked to me so exotic as at this moment:  the Palace—­and, at the same time the perspiring forehead, the dirty military outfit.  The magnificence of power,—­and the yellowish collar, badly shined boots.  He was glad of the impression produced on me, as I registered disgust,—­he, with his usual knowledge of men, thought it worship.  “Look how we, new Russians, are working”—­shouted his whole appearance, “look, you pig, and compare with what you have been doing!”

“Alexander Fedorovich,” I said approaching him, “I thought I had to bring my resignation personally.  You’ll find the reasons as “family circumstances,”—­and I gave him the paper.

He rose.  With one hand on the buttons of his uniform and the other on the desk, he believed himself to look like Napoleon.  Like Napoleon he looked straight into my eyes.  But his weak and thin fingers were always moving like a small octopus—­Napoleon’s were stronger.

“May I ask you the real cause of your resignation?” he said, vainly forcing his high-pitched voice lower.

“If you care to know it,” I said calmly,—­“It is disgust.”