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." Napoleon faded away from his face, and before me was again Monsieur Kerensky, a little lawyer with whom I had once made a trip from Moscow to Petrograd. A little lawyer who tried to please me and looked for my sympathy. "That's the appreciation of our work!... Poor Russia! She is deserted! Here I am all alone to carry this burden"--and Kerensky showed with a circular movement of disorder on his desk,--"But you," he continued, after a pause,--"you! Why should _you_ be disgusted, and why should _you_ leave us at this strenuous moment? Don't you see that the building up of the state needs the full co-operation of every element of Russia,--the new ones, as well as the old?" I said that I did not think I was more of an old element than he, but repeated my categoric decision. As if wounded right in the heart, with a theatrical sigh, Kerensky looked out of the window, then smiled bitterly, and took the paper from me. "I grant you your request. I know what disgusted you,--and, and--I understand. I hope you will not regret this step."