February 4, 1919

Today, for perhaps the hundredth time in this catastrophic year, I witnessed an incident which reminded me of how quickly the pomp of power passes, how near to the highest place in the capitol yawns the abyss by the Tarpeian Rock. I saw Count Cassini, so long ambassador extraordinary of Holy Russia, running through the sleet and rain on the Place de la Madeleine to catch a bus to take him to the modest suburban retreat, or refuge, with which the French government has provided him.

I grant you that thousands of other people were doing the very same thing at this crowded hour, but the difference is that they have done it every day of their lives; they are inured to it. But Cassini! When I saw him first (1896), he was lording it over all China. He was practically Viceroy of the Far East. When he moved through the streets of Peking, sotnias of Cossacks dashed ahead and cleared the way for the little man with the monocle who for four years, with the dreaded power of Russia behind him, dominated four hundred million Chinese and made them do his bidding.

“I want a railway to run across China from the Amoor to the sea.”

“Excellency, we shall be delighted.”

“But,” he explained, “unfortunately, there are many, so many Hunhuzes in that territory, outlaws who respect neither Russian nor Chinese culture, I shall have to have guards, perhaps a little army, in that zone to protect our rails.”

“Undoubtedly, Excellency, it shall be as you say.”

As these pictures passed before me, the little man, now almost blind and evidently quite lame, was climbing onto the tail board of the bus and the conductress was giving him a piece of her mind and a push with her stout arm. She did not want him to clutter up the platform, and it was there he wanted to smoke a cigarette; the two purposes clashed, and I hung back. Perhaps I was a fair-weather friend, but I did not want the great man of former days to know that I witnessed his hour of humiliation. And help him I could not. The French government was doling out to him, as to the other great ones now in exile from Unholy Russia, a meager monthly stipend which at least keeps the wolf from the door. Of course, all these advances are being entered on the Grand Livre of the Russian debt in the hope, a forlorn one I think, that Russia will pay up when, as the expression is, “things once again become normal.”