d whether he remembers
_me_. And the other chap will probably answer her, as I did. How
tactless!

My God! Long and uninteresting life looks to me! Does it only look, or
did it become?... I must sleep all of this off!

37

My sole connection with the rest of the world is my work in
the Princess' garden. A dull, tiresome, uninteresting work, in
fact--labor. As a diversion--the corpulent cook. My God! If she would
only wash oftener!...

When I come home--I look out of the small window; the landscape is
magnificent: about twenty yards of virgin soil with Spring grass on it
and the barn on the horizon. Behind--the fence, over which I see the
tops of the heads of passers-by.

"Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis spectare laborem...." I
forget how it runs further! My latin gets weak. I wish I had Virgil,
or even "Commentarii de Bello Gallico." I'd be arrested and tried if I
asked for them in a book store....

If only I could obtain some money, and buy a decent suit and get
away,--to Vladivostok, and then through America to France. It seems as
though France is all. It is life. It is salvation from my miseries.

In the evenings I try to arrange in shape my documents and writings
after the looting. For the documents I could be well paid, here,--but
I do not want that. Let the Russia of to-morrow see what has been done
by our present leaders, and by those who gave us to the scaffold....
M. Kerensky's letter to Grimm--alone would make me happy if some day
its contents are known....

Where is Lucie now? How empty my house is!

The Princess came out to me in the garden and asked me whether I could
go to Tobolsk and deliver a letter to Mr. Botkin there.

"Of course, I can, your Ladyship, if I have enough money."

"I don't mean that," she answered coldly, looking with disgust at the
manure I was mixing, "don't worry, we will pay you. I mean whether you
could arrange with your Bolsheviki for a permit."

"Why not?" I answered, "they do not want _me_. I am not a _rich man_,
nor a _Nobleman_...." (I simply love to annoy her).

"That will do, Alexei," she said, casting at me a nasty look, "You may
come for the letter at dinner time. Tell the cook that you want to see
me."

She does not think that I am a man. She hates me. Under my beard and
shabby flannel shirt she sees neither my face nor my person. She has
no shame before me: were I in my uniform of a gentleman-in-waiting,
cleanly shaven and speaking he