ns to fight
still.... Perhaps there was hope?

This dark figure and the other frightened silhouettes of the
endangered ladies in the Mansion, surrounded by their jailers, keep me
turning from side to side each night.

I see crooked smiles full of rotting teeth; I see perspiring low
foreheads and piercing oily eyes; and I know that New Russia has no
compassion.

44

Nachman invited me to a dinner. Later Dutzman came and brought a
smirking girl with him. Nothing very interesting. A girl. She sang
gypsy songs accompanied by a guitar. Good voice--and bad manners. We
had champagne, caviar and cigars,--_real Uppman_.

"Eh," he said, "After all--this life _is_ good! Much better even than
when I was secretary of the 'Courier of Moscow.' Of course, it is
transitory.... Won't you take some more, please?... and we all will be
out. Perhaps those of us who will not, by that time, hang, will have
already some money put aside. Not I--I am a spender. I can't keep this
money."

He was happy and therefore talkative and sincere.

He continued.... "You ask how we get this money? Easily, comrad, very
easily, indeed. Besides what we receive from Petrograd, we have other
incomes. For instance, here, take this case of the Emperor. Why do you
think we intend to send him to Ekaterinburg? Why should we send him
towards the approaching Czechs?"

"Everything has been taken by them; they threaten to crush us if the
Allies will assist them, even in the slightest way. Still we send. It
is a question of two hundred thousand rubles,--but nobody knows that
I, Nachman, a scabby Jew, got about fifty thousand out of them. Now
another thing: who got the pay for the heavy trucks, and for the
benzine, and for the tents, and for the ... oh, many other things!...
who got it? This very Nachman, yes, comrad ... have some more, please,
it's good!..."

45

"Quod forti placuit legis habet valorem."

Sailor Khokhriakov--the special envoy of the Sovnarkom--and his band.
Here is the real danger, but only in case Colonel Kobylinsky and his
Detachment of Special Destination would consent to join the Soviets.
They all hesitate, not the Colonel, however.

The meeting of the Peoples' Commissaries from Petrograd (Khokhriakov)
and Kaganitsky (from Ural, I guess) is certainly worthy of
description. I went there, leaving for that reason my Mansion
duties--(simply by saying to Pashinsky "tell them I am not coming
to the Mansion as I have to atten