"Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis spectare laborem...." I forget how it runs further! My latin gets weak. I wish I had Virgil, or even "Commentarii de Bello Gallico." I'd be arrested and tried if I asked for them in a book store.... If only I could obtain some money, and buy a decent suit and get away,--to Vladivostok, and then through America to France. It seems as though France is all. It is life. It is salvation from my miseries. In the evenings I try to arrange in shape my documents and writings after the looting. For the documents I could be well paid, here,--but I do not want that. Let the Russia of to-morrow see what has been done by our present leaders, and by those who gave us to the scaffold.... M. Kerensky's letter to Grimm--alone would make me happy if some day its contents are known.... Where is Lucie now? How empty my house is! The Princess came out to me in the garden and asked me whether I could go to Tobolsk and deliver a letter to Mr. Botkin there. "Of course, I can, your Ladyship, if I have enough money." "I don't mean that," she answered coldly, looking with disgust at the manure I was mixing, "don't worry, we will pay you. I mean whether you could arrange with your Bolsheviki for a permit." "Why not?" I answered, "they do not want _me_. I am not a _rich man_, nor a _Nobleman_...." (I simply love to annoy her). "That will do, Alexei," she said, casting at me a nasty look, "You may come for the letter at dinner time. Tell the cook that you want to see me." She does not think that I am a man. She hates me. Under my beard and shabby flannel shirt she sees neither my face nor my person. She has no shame before me: were I in my uniform of a gentleman-in-waiting, cleanly shaven and speaking her language, and not in the one I acquired lately, she would have buttoned her shoes, gartered her stockings, and would not have shown the bad quality of her corset cover under her wide-opened _robe-de-chambre_. If she only knew how her hired help understood her. At four I was in the kitchen. Here--another interesting phase of life! The woman from Moscow who claims to be a cook, does not think I am from her midst, but feels with her organic cleverness that I am an imposter. "You,--gentry! You liar! Hate your face! Hope the devil will get you soon!" she says,--but she isn't a bad woman, she means well, only she is not as clean as her profession demands. Altogether the kitchen is a mournful place. "What is your business?" she asked, "You want to see the Princess? Don't lie to me!" "My business is none of your business," said I, "Forget it! Better tell me if I can have some beer? Go on, cookie, lay it out. Don't be so stingy!" The stubborn woman would not give it to me, until I took her gently around the waist and pinched her arm with all of my force,--that's the way to get cook's sympathies; it's astonishing how it works! I got some beer. Then I was invited in: "Come in, you scabby devil."