The town is in a state of depression; the people in the streets look grave. Only some hooligan may be seen to laugh, or a contractor, portly and unscrupulous, who stalks along in sublime indifference. The pig! + 

As I write these words the Germans may be entering Warsaw. When I close my eyes I see them as plainly as on the film of a kinematograph, with their pointed helmets, marching victoriously through the ruined, deserted streets, past blazing houses. I remember how the men in our office used to joke about Wilhelm’s presumptuousness, the stories they used to tell of his having declared he would dine in Paris and sup in Warsaw, and the like; and while the fools were enjoying the joke, the Germans have come! they are here! What can we do? The disgrace of it! + 

How could we have been so blind as not to foresee the danger? Again I shut my eyes and see their pointed helmets, the flames, the panic-stricken inhabitants crouching behind the houses. What is the use of their hiding? Supposing it were not Petrograd where I sat writing in the dead of night, but in Warsaw, with the Germans marching across the bridge, entering the town.⁠ ⁠… Horrible thought! A loud knock comes at my door, and a German walks in and looks about him, strutting from room to room as though the place belonged to him. He questions me with a rifle in his hand, and keeps from shooting me down only out of a feeling of charity. How would I look into his blue Teutonic eyes? Would I smile to him, out of politeness only, of course, but would I? No! + 

I shall not sleep tonight. + 