this cistern.... It indicates a mighty good
spirit,--but that gang outside would have us strung up in the
twinkling of an eye....

"... I KNOW that Marie expects ME to do something from the inquiring
way she gazes in my eyes.... She says nothing, but any man of spirit
who looks into such clear, unflinching eyes under conditions such
as these, will understand instinctively what is written in their
suggestive depths!... They literally SHAME me for the little I
can do.... Some lounge lizards may speculate on the nature of the
sentiments this grateful princess will reveal if I display sufficient
ingenuity to save us all from this slowly approaching DEATH!... How
dramatic!... How absurd!

"... I have lately laughed at those Italian poets who bewail the
isolation of their Lauras, yet, recalling my Lady Buckingham's
repeated rescues, I begin to recognize a reason for the existence of
that poetic fervor which agitates the artistic heart when either its
safety or its vanity is at stake."...

35. This entry offers a little encouragement:

"There is no such thing as physical exhaustion.... Hunger and thirst
may weight us down, but with the right kind of inspiration a man can
do miraculous things.... I began rolling up balls of mud from the
tunnel and carrying them into the cistern until my tongue hung out
of my mouth.... With those balls I started making a winding stairway
around the wall of this cistern until I had a dozen steps completed
... then the girls began making the balls and bringing them in to me
like muddy little hod-carriers.... My masonry took on proportions as
the minutes dragged by.... Finally we have a stairway four feet wide
and extending from the bottom to within four feet of the top as I
write these lines with the girls sitting a few steps below me in the
slowly hardening clay.... We can all hear plainly the tramping of feet
on the planking overhead.... It is a kind of shuffling one hears when
seated somewhere beneath the dancers in a ballroom, and it may mean
that we are headed directly toward the LION'S DEN."...

36. In this entry the Emperor speaks of Rasputin, spooks and Jews:

"It became dark and spooky when our lights gave out.... and while we
sat huddled together the subject of 'ghosts' came up.... 'Ghosts!' the
'prisoner' almost snarled; 'that reminds me of the Jewish propaganda
against my Government.... There was hardly a Yiddish banker in the
world who did not accuse ME personally of inspiring