... and if anything happens to me she will KNOW
that I did my job well up to the minute I write this.... In a few
hours more the future political history of the world may be changed
forever.... To blot out _seven_ lives is all.... _Dokonchet the
Romanoffs!_"
23. This entry follows:
"To satisfy the mob I had to perform a very unpleasant _duty_.... I
use the word duty advisedly, remembering the instructions I committed
to memory in the underground office of the Wilhelmstrasse .... Knowing
that I am continually WATCHED and spied upon, not only by that nurse
in the window over there, but by a number of crazed lunatics
in uniform, I was compelled to treat a very pretty Princess
_shamefully_.... News was spread yesterday that Japan had loaned
Siberia $250,000,000, and the mob was clamoring for the jewels of
the prisoners. This unoffending Princess--this girl, hardly more
than seventeen--was holding a conversation in French with her brother
Alexis, a little lad of fourteen, in the courtyard. The boy was pale
and emaciated from abuse, solitude and confinement. The Princess, a
radiant beauty under this hot July sun, was trying to cheer Alexis up.
Her gown was badly soiled and of a simple soft material that seemed
to accentuate her modest resignation and glorify her courageous
cheerfulness in gloom. Her three older sisters, in gowns that spoke
of yesterdays, were walking moodily down the path, when a crowd of
ruffians burst by the sentries, tore through the doors, and dashed
into the yard in the direction of the startled girls.
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