It was a great good fortune for all of us that Maurice Paléologue was appointed as the French Ambassador to the court at St. Petersburg mere days before the outbreak of World War I, and therefore that he had a ringside seat to events as they swept across the continent, with inside information from both the Russian and the French governments. As the principal representative of Russia's greatest ally in Europe, M. Paléologue had easy access to all the major political figures associated with the court of Nicholas II, including Nicholas himself, the Empress Alexandra, Grand Duke Nicholas, the Montenegrin sisters, Anna Vyroubova, Foreign Minister Sazonov, and, of course, Rasputin. Better yet, Maurice Paléologue was a profoundly 'clubbable' man (probably in more ways than one - he had a reputation for being somewhat bumptious) with a sharp eye, a witty (again in more ways than one) turn of phrase, and an ever-receptive ear for gossip. He liked nothing better than to sit down companionably with the great and good for a cozy chat, and then to tell us all about what he had learned. His pen-sketches of the people he met, his assessments of the political and military situations facing Russia and its allies, and his search for the seat of the Russian soul, make this and the next two volumes utterly riveting for anyone with a human interest in the fate of Russia as it perched on the brink of the abyss.