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39°
39° A VISIT TO PETROGRAD [chap. xxi.
Sweden and Finland. I remember, as if it were
yesterday, my arrival at the dark and gloomy Finland
station, and the joy that filled my heart suddenly when
I saw my two sons coming to meet me, both of them
tall, young, charming, the younger one in his smart
uniform of the 4th Chasseurs of the Guard. Two
years and a half later these two splendid boys only
existed in "the silent cemetery of our memory.1 . . .
The snow which had fallen heavily the day before my
arrival, covered the ill-lighted town as with a shroud,
muffling all sounds. Petrograd, in contrast to the
brilliant and lively St. Petersburg that I had left in
March, 1914, seemed gloomy and sad; it is true that it
was the first time that I had come from the capital of a
neutral country as yet almost untouched by the war, into
that of a belligerent country. Paris made the same
impression on me fifteen months later.
The next morning I went to see M. Sazonoff. When
we had reviewed all the questions in connection with
my post in Sweden—transit, exports, exchange of
commodities, and finally the question of the day, the
Aland Islands—I asked the Minister if he thought
it advisable for me to go and see the Minister for War
and the Head of the General Staff. " Most certainly,"
replied Sazonoff; "go first to General Polivanoff, he is
a most intelligent and distinguished man with whom I
am on excellent terms." The Minister went to the
telephone, and after a little friendly conversation with
the Minister for War, apprised him of my arrival. The
General made an appointment with me for the next
morning. The Emperor was to arrive in two days’ time
from General Headquarters, and M. Sazonoff promised
to solicit an audience of His Majesty for me.
1 My younger son, Serge Nekludoff, fell in Volhynia in July, 1916.
My eldest son, Peter Nekludoff, secretary (from May, 1916) to the
Embassy in Rome, died in Paris, in September, 1918, of Spanish influenza.
Roth of them possessed—allied to great nobility of character—a true
delicacy of feeling, and qualities which earned for them the sincere
affection of all those who knew them.
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