The house seemed to be open to anyone who chose to come in. The old cherry-satin upholstery of the French chairs was in limbo. I never felt a place so small and full of ghosts. Perhaps, because it was so small, it had the feeling of having been someone’s intimate home, not a blatant place of entertaining. As we wandered round a man joined us and, speaking to us in French, asked if we were from France. His cap was drawn well over his eyes, and the collar of his overcoat turned up over his ears. One could only see a well-bred nose pinched with cold. He knew about the house and its history, and which were the best bits of furniture. He was evidently a cultured man, and but for the presence of Andrev, who always laughs at me, I would have talked to him about himself. He was rather like a ghost haunting a place he knew, and I imagine he was no Bolshevik, but one who had known prosperous days. I came away filled with sadness, and when Kameneff came to see me this evening, I tried to tell him about it, and begged him to have the house taken care of. He says that there is a committee that looks after all the houses, but I think they have passed this one by. Coming back from our wanderings we passed, in one of the squares, a statue of Gogol, the Russian writer. I thought it a very fine piece of work. Gogol, half wrapped in a cloak, looks down scrutinizingly in bronze from his rough granite seat, and Andrev laughed at me for liking it, and said that in Moscow it was scorned and had brought coals of fire down on the artist’s head. I was very surprised, and thought to myself that the standard of Russian art must be very high: but in spite of this ridicule, I stuck to my opinion. I even said that in London we had not a single statue as good as that one. Later he admitted that he was the author of it. OCTOBER 2ND.