A restaurant here disgusts me as nothing else ever did.  From a menu a foot long no one seems able to choose a meal, but something fresh must be ordered.  The prices are quite silly, and, oddly enough, people seem to revel in them.  They still eat caviare at ten shillings a head; the larger the bill the better they are pleased.

Joseph, the Napoleon of the restaurant, keeps an eye on everyone.  He is yellow, and pigeon-breasted, but his voice is like grease, and he speaks caressingly of food, pencils entries in his pocket-book, and stimulates jaded appetites by signalling the “voiture aux hors d’oeuvres” to approach.  The rooms are far too hot for anyone to feel hungry, the band plays, and the leader of it grins all the time, and capers about on his little platform like a monkey on an organ.

Always in this life of restaurants and gilt and roubles I am reminded of the fact that the only authentic picture we have of hell is of a man there who all his life had eaten good dinners.

[Page Heading:  STAGNATION]

I have been busy seeing all manner of people in order to try and get work to do.  I hear of suffering, but I am never able to locate it or to do anything for it.  No distinct information is forthcoming; and when I go to one high official he gives me his card and sends me to another.  Nothing is even decided about Mrs. Wynne’s cars, although she is offering a gift worth some thousands of pounds.  I go to Lady Georgina’s work-party on Mondays and meet the English colony, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays I distribute soup; but it is an unsatisfactory business, and the days go by and one gets nothing done.  One isn’t even storing up health, because this is rather an unhealthy place, so altogether we are feeling a bit low.  I can never again be surprised at Russian “laissez faire,” or want of push and energy.  It is all the result of the place itself.  I feel in a dream, and wish with all my heart I could wake up in my own bed.

21 November.—­Sunday, and I have slept late.  At home I begin work at 6 a.m.  Here, like everyone else, I only wake up at night, and the “best hours of the day,” as we call them, are wasted, a la Watts’ hymn, in slumber.  If it was possible one would organise one’s time a bit, but hotel life is the very mischief for that sort of thing.  There are no facilities for anything.  One must telephone in Russian or spend roubles on messengers if one wants to get into touch with anyone.  I took a taxi out to lunch one day.  It cost 16 roubles—­i.e., 32s.

Dear old Lord Radstock used to say in the spring, “The Lord is calling me to Italy,” and a testy parson once remarked, “The Lord always calls you at very convenient times, Radstock.”  I don’t feel as if the Lord had called me here at a very convenient time.

I called on Princess Helene Scherbatoff yesterday, and found her and her people at home.  The mother runs a hospital-train for the wounded in the intervals of hunting wolves.  Her son has been dead for some months, and she says she hasn’t had time to bury him yet!  One assumes he is embalmed!  Yet I can’t help saying they were charming people to meet, so we must suppose they are somewhat cracked.  The daughter is lovely, and they were all in deep mourning for the unburied relative.