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5o4 IN SPAIN AND IN EXILE [chap. xxv.
him. If it was a combination of opportunism and the
wish to bring a counterpoise to the pranks of the party
in power, this combination failed miserably, for a month
later the whole "erection" crumbled, and MM. Lenin
and Trotsky took over the power and the destiny of
unfortunate Russia. There are occasions on v/hich
opportunism becomes either pusillanimity or lack of
discernment.
When I sent my telegram to Kerensky the Counsellor
to our Embassy in Madrid, M. S-ff, was absent.
He was resting at Biarritz, for prior to my arrival he
had been at the head of affairs for a long time. Having
arrived at San Sebastian and taken up his work with me,
this gentleman, who was not lacking in wit or charm,
but whom I had always considered to be devoid of real
intelligence and moral distinction, hastened to telegraph
to the Foreign Office in Petrograd to say that he himself
and the other members of the Embassy (there were three
altogether), thoroughly disapproved of my telegram,
"which, moreover, had been dispatched by their chief
when he was in a state of acute neurasthenia"; that they
professed profound esteem and unlimited devotion for
the Provisional Government and for M. Kerensky, and
were entirely at his disposal, etc.
This proceeding, which I only heard of much later,
did not have the desired result for my ex-colleague,
i.e. the renewal of a long term of management at the
Embassy. The post of "Ambassador of M. Kerensky,"
which I had resigned, very soon found a candidate in
the person of M. Stahovitch, who had just given up the
Governorship-General of Finland after three months of
earnest but vain efforts at conciliation. The new
Ambassador hastened to take up his post, and to leave
Russia, where things were becoming far too hot. But
all the same he started too late: a week after his
departure the Bolsheviks were already masters of the
Government, and his credentials, signed by M. Kerensky,
had no longer any value. I do not exactly know what
position has been allotted to him in Madrid.
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