They were all speaking at once, so that I was bewildered by their volubility and their passionate gesticulations. Desiring to clear up the difficulty, I sought an interpreter, and as soon as we returned, the cries were redoubled. “What are they all saying?” I demanded of Issajoff, the interpreter. “Why are they holding me back like this?” Issajoff smiled. “Here is something,” he said, “which wins me over to France! You’re astonished that these Russians prevent you giving help to a Jew, that they insist on assuring you that he is a Jew. To them it seems self-evident that as soon as you know him to be a Jew you will no longer wish to give him anything, but will treat him as a leper, a pariah, a damned soul!” The Russians continued to scream, to look murderously at the Jew, to shake their fists at him. As for him, with his customary air of dull indifference, he remained quietly in his own corner behind the door, beside the dustbin and the spittoon, the dirtiest and dampest corner of the casemate. Said Issajoff: “They say to him, ‘You have crucified our Lord Jesus Christ’—‘I have defiled your mother’—this is the grossest insult in our language. They also say to him, ‘You love the Germans; if you could, you would have shot us.’ They also say: ‘If you accept the Frenchman’s present, we will flay you alive!’” Issajoff is a revolutionist—and a Jew, although he keeps this last fact to himself. Coldly and deliberately he reported to me his comrades’ words. But the vague smile which played over his large features indicated irony and contempt. “You really find this scene surprising?” he resumed. I contemplated these disciples of the Christ, all yapping at this poor wretch. For the first time in my life I found my Christianity a heavy burden. I went up to Kajedan. I pressed him by the hand and gave him the orange. I wanted to give him the contents of my cigarette case, but he said he did not smoke. “Well, give them to your friends.” He did so. The Russians greedily seized the _papirosy_. They threw themselves on their palliasses, and, forgetting to avenge their God any longer, they gave themselves up to the delights of tobacco. VASSILI _July 1, 1915._ I am Vassili’s _barin_ (seigneur). He polishes my shoes; every morning, in the court, he brings me water for my “teube”; he picks up balls for me in our extemporized game of tennis; if I am thirsty, he runs to the well; if the cloth of my worn trousers, too skimpy for me (the government has never been able to supply me with trousers suited to my figure), gives way during an unusually vigorous movement of Swedish gymnastics, he promptly threads a needle and repairs the damage; he watches over me as one watches milk on the boil; no valet has ever served me so well. But what constrains him?