pation, and took a child's
pleasure in the different aspects of the life that characterizes the
city of the Great Peter. He stopped before the Winter Palace, walked
slowly across the square where the prodigious monolith of the Alexander
Column rises from its bronze socket, strolled between the palace and the
colonnades, passed under an immense arch: everything seemed Cyclopean to
him, and he never had felt so tiny, so insignificant. None the less he
was happy in his insignificance, he was satisfied with himself in the
presence of these colossal things; everything pleased him this morning.
The speed of the isvos, the bickering humor of the osvotchicks, the
elegance of the women, the fine presences of the officers and their easy
naturalness under their uniforms, so opposed to the wooden posturing of
the Berlin military men whom he had noticed at the "Tilleuls" and in
the Friederichstrasse between two trains. Everything enchanted him--the
costume even of the moujiks, vivid blouses, the red shirts over
the trousers, the full legs and the boots up to the knees, even the
unfortunates who, in spite of the soft atmosphere, were muffled up in
sheepskin coats, all impressed him favorably, everything appeared to him
original and congenial.

Order reigned in the city. The guards were polite, decorative and
superb in bearing. The passers-by in that quarter talked gayly among
themselves, often in French, and had manners as civilized as anywhere
in the world. Where, then, was the Bear of the North? He never had seen
bears so well licked. Was it this very city that only yesterday was in
revolution? This was certainly the Alexander Park where troops a few
weeks before had fired on children who had sought refuge in the trees,
like sparrows. Was this the very pavement where the Cossacks had left
so many bodies? Finally he saw before him the Nevsky Prospect, where
the bullets rained like hail not long since upon a people dressed for
festivities and very joyous. Nichevo! Nichevo! All that was so
soon forgotten. They forgot yesterday as they forget to-morrow. The
Nihilists? Poets, who imagined that a bomb could accomplish anything
in that Babylon of the North more important than the noise of its
explosion! Look at these people who pass. They have no more thought
for the old attack than for those now preparing in the shadow of the
"tracktirs." Happy men, full of serenity in this bright quarter, who
move about their affairs and their pleasures