Rescuing the Czar / Two authentic diaries arranged and translated

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urring tramp of the muffled sentry below my broken window ... this building has a sort of Byzantine cut in its architectural design.... On the other side of the valley there's a minaret or two visible through the smoky haze.... Off to the left I can make out quite distinctly the outlines of a Greek Cross.... The road leading toward that Cross looks like the work of a Muscovite engineer,-which speaks well for it.... It's built of the same ma

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e of those champagne-colored rose leaves that are crystallized by the firm of Demitrof at Moscow and sold as confections to the ladies of the Court!... What does it mean?... Furthermore, if t

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was trying hard to flirt with ... the same dark-eyed Juno that same American met in the Salle des étrangers at the Casino, the following day about noon.... Well, that is the connection!... But I did not observe that that wonderful lady wore any large SAPPHIRE that night ... nor when she changed her quarters from the Nouvel to the London did she need any such jewelry to have all the spendthrifts of Europe at her feet.... If she was a 'Princess' then I was completely fooled.... I never saw a real Princess, except Eulalia, who knew how to be democratic enough to select an American for a quiet exchange of ideas ... the rest, no matter how desperately they ma

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st have been STOLEN from St. Petersburg.[A] ... Here is the Madonna del Latte of Corregio, or a mighty good imitation, that everyone remembers, from the Hermitage. Here is Rembrandt's 'Girl with the Broom,' the Portrait of Sobieski, and the 'Farmyard' of Paul Potter. Here is the 'Expulsion of Hagar' by Rubens in which Sarah wears a white handkerchief and yellow veil around her head, with one of her hands resting on her hip and the other encased in a blue sleeve raised in a threatening gesture toward Hagar, and here is 'Celestine and her Daughter in Prison,' that one NEVER forgets because of the controversy between the partisans of Murillo and Velasquez over which of these two painters did the work. And here is Lossenke's 'Sunrise on the Black Sea,' Ugrimov's 'Capture of Kazan' and 'Election of Michael Romanov,' in which the artist reaches the heights of Oriental splendor in color, composition

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few faint specks zigzagging in the firmament away to the northeast.... Now there are a number of specks from the south speedily joining these and ALL seem to be flitting higher and higher out of sight.... Now the Foelkers are circling rapidly upward.... The tramp and rattle of an Army can be heard coming u

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solitary animal is in sight.... The road out yonder looks much the worse for wear. It seems ground into a pumice stone by the hoofs of horses and the swift movement of heavy wheels. Every gust of wind sends a cloud of fine dust pyramiding its way across the fields and through the crevices of this suffocating den furnished with a few wooden chairs, a hand-carved beds

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