. The tears were streaming down
my face. I couldn't help myself. I wanted to hold the sun and the snow
and the people all in my arms fixed so that it should never change, and
the world should see how good and innocent life could be.

"On every side people had asked what had really happened, and of course
no one knew. But it did not matter. Every one was so simple. A soldier,
standing beside one of the placards was shouting: '_Tovaristchi!_ What
we must have is a splendid Republic and a good Czar to look after it.'

"And they all cheered him and laughed and sang. I turned up one of the
side streets on to the Fontanka, and here I saw them emptying the rooms
of one of the police. That was amusing! I laugh still when I think of
it. Sending everything out of the windows,--underclothes, ladies'
bonnets, chairs, books, flower-pots, pictures, and then all the records,
white and yellow and pink paper, all fluttering in the sun like so many
butterflies. The crowd was perfectly peaceful, in an excellent temper.
Isn't that wonderful when you think that for months those people had
been starved and driven, waiting all night in the street for a piece of
bread, and that now all discipline was removed, no more policemen except
those hiding for their lives in houses, and yet they did nothing, they
touched no one's property, did no man any harm. People say now that it
was their apathy, that they were taken by surprise, that they were like
animals who did not know where to go, but I tell you, Ivan Andreievitch,
that it was not so. I tell you that it was because just for an hour the
soul could come up from its dark waters and breathe the sun and the
light and see that all was good. Oh, why cannot that day return? Why
cannot that day return?..."

He broke off and looked at me like a distracted child, his brows
puckered, his hands beating the air. I did not say anything. I wanted
him to forget that I was there.

He went on: "... I could not be there all day, I thought that I would go
on to the Duma. I flowed on with the crowd. We were a great river
swinging without knowing why, in one direction and only interrupted,
once and again, by the motor lorries that rattled along, the soldiers
shouting to us and waving their rifles, and we replying with cheers. I
heard no firing that morning at all. They said, in the crowd, that many
thousands had been killed last night. It seemed that on the roof of
nearly every house in Petrograd there was a poli