ON THIS DATE IN THEIR OWN WORDS: GRAND DUKE DMITRI TO NICHOLAS II. 17 NOVEMBER, 1911.

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich to Nicholas II:

S.Petersburg, 1911. 17^th November.

Dear Uncle,

I thank you terribly for your charming letter and for treating my request so positively. Of course it would be even more pleasant for me if I got an affirmative response to my request, but for a no – there is no trial. So I will try to work here too. I will try to do my best to give feasible assistance to our common goal!

We are starting to get new recruits now, although there are no classes for them yet. They are still only looking around and moving through the barracks uncertainly and with major civilian appearance.

I often read in the newspapers about what you are doing in Livadia. And I admit that every time I feel sorry that I am not with you. How are the evening dances? It would have been a perfect opportunity for me to grab Zizishka’s hips and run with her, or for example to squeeze Baroness Fredericks with sweet passion and dance with her, forgetting everything around us! He! He! he!

There are no evenings in Petersburg yet, thank God, and I hope there won’t be for a long time yet. I hate those fashionable evenings. You enter, stunned, everyone seems like a stranger. Kiss the hands of young ladies, do not look at the married ladies. Ah! It is horrible, and then the visits the next day. Devil may take them!

The weather is nice here. Two, three degrees of frost, clear skies, sunny, but no snow, although personally I think that it will soon appear (snow).

I am hearing rumors that my mamasha (Alix!) is not behaving herself. Meaning in terms of her health. This is not good. Tell her that I am very unhappy about this. Let her remember me or the poor postal worker, and maybe then she will feel better.

Well then, I embrace you firmly.

I seek sweetly and passionately the same with my lips with Aunt, and cover the children with juicy but chaste kisses (let them wipe themselves).

Yours Dmitri