nother
until at last the preparation would be complete, and then....

Oh, but I cared for Nina and Vera and Nicholas--yes, and Jerry too! I
wanted to see them happy and at peace before I left them--in especial
Nicholas.

And Semyonov came closer to them and closer, following some plan of his
own and yet, after all, finally like a man driven by a power,
constructed it might be, out of his own very irony.

I made a kind of bet with fate that by Easter Day every one should be
happy by then.

Next day, the 15th of April, was the great funeral for the victims of
the Revolution. I believe, although of course at that time I had heard
nothing, that there had been great speculation about the day, many
people thinking that it would be an excuse for further trouble, the
Monarchists rising, or the "Soviet" attacking the Provisional
Government, or Milyukoff and his followers attacking the Soviet. They
need not have been alarmed. No one had as yet realised the lengths that
Slavonic apathy may permit itself....

I went down about half-past ten to the Square at the end of the Sadovaya
and found it filled with a vast concourse of peasants, not only the
Square was filled, but the Sadovaya as far as the eye could see. They
were arranged in perfect order, about eight in a row, arm in arm. Every
group carried its banner, and far away into the distance one could see
the words "Freedom," "Brotherhood," "The Land for All," "Peace of the
World," floating on the breeze. Nevertheless, in spite of these fine
words, it was not a very cheering sight. The day was wretched--no actual
rain, but a cold damp wind blowing and the dirty snow, half ice and half
water; the people themselves were not inspiring. They were all, it
seemed, peasants. I saw very few workmen, although I believe that
multitudes were actually in the procession. Those strange, pale, Eastern
faces, passive, apathetic, ignorant, childish, unreasoning, stretched in
a great cloud under the grey overhanging canopy of the sky. They raised
if once and again a melancholy little tune that was more wail than
anything else. They had stood there, I was told, in pools of frozen
water for hours, and were perfectly ready to stand thus for many hours
more if they were ordered to do so. As I regarded their ignorance and
apathy I realised for the first time something of what the Revolution
had already done.

A hundred million of these children--ignorant, greedy, pathetic,
helpless, revengeful--