y both dead? Now since
the Ls are gone and Pasha has become some Bolshevik's property (poor
little thing!) I have no idea what to do. Shall I consider myself in
the game, or did the whole organization end; shall I continue on my
own behalf? I have been thinking, and thinking about it, and have
decided that I must continue my informative functions, and must wait
as I have been told. They said I shall be on my post--and I must
remain. The absence of letters does not mean much: they can be in a
terrible situation in Moscow now--we know nothing. If my letters have
not reached Goroshkin--they have reached somebody else; in the latter
case I would have been hanged long ago, or shot, or something similar,
if the letters did not reach friends.

Lucie? Well if she is not the crookedest woman! I do not think I could
get rid of her now even if I would. Schmelin knows of my going out
of town, it is clear. Of course he closes his eyes,--but I never can
doubt that he will be the first to "put me on a clear water" as soon
as he apprehends that the other commissaries know of my wanderings and
trading with the Letts, and of what is now under our bed.

Something new: Lucie received a rubber bath, so I have to warm up the
water and then wait....

(_end of page missing_)

... She would come back, as soon as I shall be ready putting the wires
instead of the ropes in the yard for drying the linen. I was glad to
know it. Certainly. Personally I am very glad to see her around: she
is a nice little woman when she does not plot. It is agreeable to
have tea at five and then everything looks so clean and neat since
she came. Good God, should she be simply a nice little Lucie! How
agreeable everything could become--as if there were no Revolution, no
Bolsheviki, no Emperor.... But no; Fate has to put a drop of tar in
a barrel of honey. However, perhaps I would have hated to see a cook
around here: as soon as a woman gets too domestic--she infallibly
becomes unattractive. As for Lucie--enclosed in a cage as we are--I
never saw her unwashed, uncombed, frivolous or unladylike. So let her
be a plotter. I must be grateful as we never quarrel.... She sends me
away when....

(_end of page missing_)

32

(_Fifth letter to M. Goroshkin_)

"... a man by name Alexander Petrovich Mamaev from Novo-Nikolaevsk.
He has a plan of his own, which he wants to accomplish. He has some
people working for him, nothing serious, if I may judge. Mamaev's pl