We left London on 9 September at about nine in the morning. At noon, we boarded the ferry in Dover. The sea was rough, but Agniya bore it bravely. In Calais, against our expectations, we had a rather unpalatable lunch in the restaurant at the railway station. We were in Paris by 11 p.m., with little to report about the journey. What surprised me was the emptiness of the French roads: very few cars, and we rarely had to overtake. Quite different from England.

The embassy was empty too. Surits and his family have already left for Geneva. Girshfeld

E.V. Girshfeld, first secretary at the Soviet Union’s Paris embassy, then Litvinov’s general secretary at Narkomindel.

is on leave in the USSR and will stay to work in Moscow. A number of the embassy staff are away, either on holiday or on business. The only person to be found wandering around the enormous building is Biryukov,

I. Biryukov, first secretary to the Soviet embassy in France, 1940–41.

the first secretary, temporarily acting as chargé d’affaires, or, as he himself puts it, Mr Unfairly Charged. He really does have far too much on his plate. We spent the night in the Blue Room, while our driver stayed in a neighbouring hotel. On the morning of the 10th we walked around the city and did some shopping. At about three o’clock, having lunched in a restaurant we found on our way, we set off. We wanted to get to Dijon before nightfall, but the evening was dark and wet, so we decided to make a stop in Avalon. We put up in a small and primitive hotel on the way to this little town, where they served us a magnificent supper. I am fairly indifferent to the qualities of food, but on this occasion even my taste buds were astonished by the exceptional quality of the poulard which we were served. At eleven in the morning we were back on the road. Lunch in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy. Excellent yet again. The French are simply geniuses in matters culinary. We had a fantastic Burgundy with our meal. Whether because of the wine or for some other reason, I left my Baedeker to France in the restaurant. Before lunch, Agniya and I had taken a lengthy stroll around Dijon. A nice old town, French to its core. We were greatly surprised to find, in a dark corner behind a church, ‘Rue Babeuf’.

Named after the guillotined French revolutionary whose ideas were precursors of communism.

Agniya photographed the corner bearing the sign. In a good mood (improved further by the fine weather) and with a pleasant weight in our stomachs, we left Dijon at about three and, after crossing the Jura, reached Geneva at about seven that evening.

We found the Richmond empty. It was Sunday and M.M., accompanied by the whole delegation and the ‘undersecretary’ Sokolin,

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sokolin, counsellor at the Soviet embassy in Paris, 1936–39.

had set off in the morning, as always, for an outing to France. They were expected to return late in the evening. After settling in the hotel, Agniya and I quickly toured the town. We dined at the Bavaria.