Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/249

Rh the revolutionary mirage develops into a very virulent germ once spread amongst a discontented populace.

This Emperor of whom a German diplomat before the war once said jokingly: "If he goes to a christening he wants to be the child; if to a marriage he wants to be the bridegroom; and if to a funeral he wants to be the corpse!"

To-day this Emperor has been nick-named the "Red Kaiser," the War Kaiser, the Kaiser of the Ruins, the Kaiser of the Massacres, and of all the horrors which have been committed.

But, vengeance will come, and justice will make itself felt. Sooner or later, vengeance must come.

That which is not generally known, but what I know authoritatively, is that France might have obtained for herself and her Allies a separate peace with Austria. The brothers of the Empress of Austria were educated in France and are very French at heart, they had gone so far as to open peace negotiations through the intermediary of the Vatican, and all would have gone well had it not been for the regrettable pride of the Italians and the Masonic Lodges!

And to-day, December 1917, before closing these pages, I look back once more in the direction of the dear great Russia and I salute her; there, towards the great Steppe beneath its almost perpetual whiteness, where the silence makes itself felt; towards the luminous and pure atmosphere of the beautiful country of the Don Cossacks, where there seems still to be