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5o4 IN SPAIN AND IN EXILE [chap. xxv.
affairs which was absolutely illegal and fatal to the
country.
Of course there was an opinion prevailing that honest,
reasonable and expert men should remain all the same
in the service of Russia in order to save whatever could
be saved; should not give up their places to dangerous
quacks and reserve themselves—at their posts—for the
future. This opinion was justifiable; only in order to
profess it, it was necessary to believe firmly that matters
might still be arranged and relative order restored in
the country. That is what I aspired to do, but each
day I lost another shred of hope.
Towards the end of August I went from San
Sebastian to Paris on private business. I stayed there
ten days. My impressions were truly depressing. Paris
was full of Russians, all official personages, charged
with some mission or other, having work to do either at
the front, or with the Red Cross, or on some financial or
economic commission—in short drawing salaries from
the Russian Exchequer and receiving emoluments on
credit still granted to Russia by allied France. Among
these compatriots I noticed some metamorphoses which
would have made the fortune of a Vauvenargues and
delighted a Pailleron or a de Flers. A young but
pompous official who owed his early career to the
special protection of the Empress Alexandra and the
Vyrubova, now held himself carefully and earnestly
aloof from people whose orthodoxy in Socialist and
revolutionary matters might be open to suspicion.
Another gentleman—plausible but rather too clever at
times—whom I had overheard a few years ago relating
how he had gone down on his knees in front of the
little Tsarevitch so that the delightful child could play
more easily with his decorations, now aired the views
of a Brutus and was always in the company of those
beloved and worthy Russian revolutionaries come back
as masters to that same Paris where they had formerly
lived as poor exiles. The beaming and radiant smiles
which had formerly broken out at the mere sight of a
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