did not much like doing so with nothing but an English
passport, and with no papers to show that I had any right to
be there. I had, like the other foreigners, been promised
such papers but had not yet received them. I went round to
the Regina, which used to be one of the best hotels in the
town, but those of us who had rooms there were
complaining so bitterly that I did not stay with them, but
went off along the Moika to the Nevsky and so back to my
own hotel. The streets, like the hotel, were only half lit, and
hardly any of the houses had a lighted window. In the old
sheepskin coat I had worn on the front and in my high fur
hat, I felt like some ghost of the old regime visiting a town
long dead. The silence and emptiness of the streets
contributed to this effect. Still, the few people I met or
passed were talking cheerfully together and the rare
sledges and motors had comparatively good roads, the
streets being certainly better swept and cleaned than they
have been since the last winter of the Russian Empire.





SMOLNI



Early in the morning I got tea, and a bread card on which I
was given a very small allowance of brown bread, noticeably
better in quality than the compound of clay and straw which