... 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 Sheglovitov to
have the Jews executed for _ritualistic murder_; and I am sure their
influence will be very strong with certain statesmen and opportunists
to have my Empire dismembered when the time comes to settle the terms
of peace, as poor Nilus predicted.
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