Quotes from Élisabeth Gille

The widespread joy that greeted Rasputin's assassination confused me. No matter what crimes the starets had committed, I was not accustomed to the idea of rejoicing at a man's death, even less at his murder.

Committees were organized, most notably a defense committee, which gathered an impressive arsenal that included silver table knives and pocket knives, not to mention fireplace pokers and curtain rods. At lunch and dinner we consumed enormous quantities of caviar and vodka, for the hotel seemed to have infinite reserves of these, though bread was beginning to grow scarce.

St. Petersburg—"Peter" to insiders—was renamed Petrograd at the start of the war in an attempt to erase its Germanic origins. From the first months of 1915, the atmosphere in the city had changed completely.

I read and reread these pages all day long as I sat next to the cast-iron stove. In the absence of coal, we burned wooden boards pilfered from the rubble of destroyed houses in order to keep warm in these chilly early days of spring. In times of plenty my appetite had always been small, but now I often went hungry.