ceman with a
machine-gun. But we marched along, without fear, singing. And all the
time the joy in my heart was rising, rising, and I was checking it,
telling myself that in a moment I would be disappointed, that I would
soon be tricked as I had been so often tricked before. But I couldn't
help my joy, which was stronger than myself....

"It must have been early afternoon, so long had I been on the road, when
I came at last to the Duma. You saw yourself, Ivan Andreievitch, that
all that week the crowd outside the Duma was truly a sea of people with
the motor lorries that bristled with rifles for sea-monsters and the
gun-carriages for ships. And such a babel! Every one talking at once and
nobody listening to any one.

"I don't know now how I pushed through into the Court, but at last I was
inside and found myself crushed up against the doors of the Palace by a
mob of soldiers and students. Here there was a kind of hush.

"When the door of the Palace opened there was a little sigh of interest.
At intervals armed guards marched up with some wretched pale dirty
Gorodovoi whom they had taken prisoner--"

Nicholas Markovitch paused again and again. He had been looking out to
the sea over whose purple shadows the sky pale green and studded with
silver stars seemed to wave magic shuttles of light, to and fro,
backwards and forwards.

"You don't mind all these details, Ivan Andreievitch? I am trying to
discover, for my own sake, all the details that led me to my final
experience. I want to trace the chain link by link...nothing is
unimportant..."

I assured him that I was absorbed by his story. And indeed I was. That
little, uncouth, lost, and desolate man was the most genuine human being
whom I had ever known. That quality, above all others, stood forth in
him. He had his secret as all men have their secret, the key to their
pursuit of their own immortality....But Markovitch's secret was a real
one, something that he faced with real bravery, real pride, and real
dignity, and when he saw what the issue of his conduct must be he would,
I knew, face it without flinching.

He went on, but looking at me now rather than the sea--looking at me
with his grave, melancholy, angry eyes. "...After one of these convoys
of prisoners the door remained for a moment open, and I seeing my chance
slipped in after the guards. Here I was then in the very heart of the
Revolution; but still, you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I couldn't properly
s