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Even now as I am writing, sad and stark reality reminds me that I am no longer in the delightful refuge at Herrenhausen, that German Versailles, but in the depth of Muscovite Tartary.

Through the window, screams, shouts, and quarrellings reach me from below; the servants of our neighbour, Princess Natalia, are fighting ours; Russians fighting Germans. I see, alas! the union between Asia and Europe, the East and the West, as it really is.

In ran our secretary, pale and trembling, his dress in tatters, his face bleeding. On seeing him the Crown Princess almost swooned. The Tsarevitch was sent for, but he was suffering from his habitual complaint—drunkenness.

May 2.

We occupy the palace of the Crown Prince Alexis, situated on the banks of the Neva, a whitewashed, two-storied house with a red-tiled roof. The accommodation is so limited that nearly the whole of her Highness’s retinue had to be lodged in the neighbouring houses, hired by the Senate for that purpose. One of them had neither doors, windows, stoves, nor furniture of any sort. Her Highness was obliged to finish it at her own expense, and add stables to it.