To my great astonishment not a muscle twitched in Goroshkin’s face.

“Not bad, not bad,” he said calmly, “but even your slang is a gentleman’s.  Your Excellency should imagine having been born a swine.  That’s the point.  I should recommend more of silence, and if you happen to speak,—­a brief articulation, roughly conceived and expressed.  Don’t bother at all with the person you are addressing.”

The old man amused me very much that evening.  I let him sit down and he told me episodes of his life for about a couple of hours.  For thirty years he had been present at every performance in his theatre and he knew the world better than I did, only by watching the artists.

January the tenth in the early morning at about six o’clock the fat Mlle. Goroshkin entered my room clad only in a nightgown.  That was the only time I saw her pale and sordid, but she was just as uninteresting as ever.  “Quick!  Get up,” she said, “they are searching.  Brother has already left, and he said you must dress and get your documents and run out.  Go to Tumen, I’ll send your effects there.”

“They” was enough for me.  I was all ready in two minutes, put all of my money and jewelry in my hip pockets, assumed the aspect of a wounded soldier and walked out.  I barely reached Miasnitskaya Street before an armored car full of working men and soldiers passed by at about fifty miles an hour.  Half a dozen bad faces looked at me.  I decided to continue calmly on my way, but I heard the car coming back very soon sounding its siren.  It stopped near me.  “Come in, cavalry man, there is a seat for one.  They found somebody in Yousupov’s house.”

I stopped and scratched my neck.  “It cannot be done, I am going to the hospital.  If I am late, I won’t have the bandage changed today.  Could you take me to the hospital on the Devitche Pole?”

“Are you crazy?” said the man at the wheel, looking at me with fury.  “Comrades, do you think I am going to drive so far for his rotten wound?” and without asking for his friends’ consent, he turned the machine and continued on his way towards Yousupov’s.

This was my first interview with Russia’s rulers.

23

I was stopped four or five times on my way to Deviche Pole.  I took this route just to show those that might have watched me that I really was going to the hospital.  Then I thought I could take a street car to a station and go somewhere south, to Tula, for instance, then wait there for a while and afterwards reach Moscow again (they cannot keep on shooting and shooting always, I reasoned) and thence to Tumen.  So I continued along Miasnitskaya.  Near the Post Office some people approached me.  “Where to?” they asked, and a woman caught me by the arm.  I made a suffering face.  “For Christ’s sake,” I exclaimed, “don’t touch me.  I am wounded!” They let me go and stopped a long, young fellow in student’s uniform.  I saw them drag the chap away regardless