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176 During the rule of Kerensky, Goremykin was arrested, but released soon afterwards and allowed to leave Petersburg. I met the ex-Premier a few weeks before his death.

In the middle of September 1917 I went for my holidays to the "Caucasian Riviera"—Sochi on the Black Sea. Everywhere one could already perceive the approach of Bolshevism and the moroseness of the masses. The passenger boats along the Caucasian shore ceased to ply, and I was obliged to hire a motorboat in order to get from Tuapse to Sochi. I was just engaged in placing my luggage in the boat when a distinguished old lady approached me and requested permission to go by our boat to Sochi, accompanied by her husband and maid.

Mutual introductions followed, and I learned it was Madame Goremykin. A few minutes afterwards the maid brought the ex-Premier. The old man was almost completely paralysed, but still retained a remarkable clearness of mind.

We chatted on recent events when I mentioned the Germans, who had demoralised the Russian army, reducing it to a maddened mob of robbers. Goremykin defended the Germans and accused the Duma and the Entente diplomacy as the authors of revolution.

On our arrival in Sochi, the Goremykins stayed in a "pension," and I went to the hotel "Riviera." A few days afterwards a gang of armed and masked men