The police-superintendent followed in the droshky.
I imagine that he had vague impressions of many interesting things of all sorts on the way, but I doubt whether he had any definite idea or any settled intention as he drove into the open space in front of his house.
But no sooner did he see the resolute and orderly ranks of "the rioters," the cordon of police, the helpless (and perhaps purposely helpless) chief of police, and the general expectation of which he was the object, than all the blood rushed to his heart.
With a pale face he stepped out of his carriage.
"Caps off!" he said breathlessly and hardly audibly.
"On your knees!" he squealed, to the surprise of every one, to his own surprise too, and perhaps the very unexpectedness of the position was the explanation of what followed.
Can a sledge on a switchback at carnival stop short as it flies down the hill?
What made it worse, Andrey Antonovitch had been all his life serene in character, and never shouted or stamped at anyone; and such people are always the most dangerous if it once happens that something sets their sledge sliding downhill.
Everything was whirling before his eyes.
"Filibusters!" he yelled still more shrilly and absurdly, and his voice broke.
He stood, not knowing what he was going to do, but knowing and feeling in his whole being that he certainly would do something directly.
"Lord!" was heard from the crowd.
A lad began crossing himself; three or four men actually did try to kneel down, but the whole mass moved three steps forward, and suddenly all began talking at once:
"Your Excellency... we were hired for a term... the manager... you mustn't say," and so on and so on.
It was impossible to distinguish anything.
Alas!
Andrey Antonovitch could distinguish nothing: the flowers were still in his hands.
The riot was as real to him as the prison carts were to Stepan Trofimovitch.
And flitting to and fro in the crowd of "rioters" who gazed open-eyed at him, he seemed to see Pyotr Stepanovitch, who had egged them on—Pyotr Stepanovitch, whom he hated and whose image had never left him since yesterday.
"Rods!" he cried even more unexpectedly.
A dead silence followed.
From the facts I have learnt and those I have conjectured, this must have been what happened at the beginning; but I have no such exact information for what followed, nor can I conjecture it so easily.
There are some facts, however.
In the first place, rods were brought on the scene with strange rapidity; they had evidently been got ready beforehand in expectation by the intelligent chief of the police.
Not more than two, or at most three, were actually flogged, however; that fact I wish to lay stress on.
It's an absolute fabrication to say that the whole crowd of rioters, or at least half of them, were punished.
It is a nonsensical story, too, that a poor but respectable lady was caught as she passed by and promptly thrashed; yet I read myself an account of this incident afterwards among the provincial items of a Petersburg newspaper.
Many people in the town talked of an old woman called Avdotya Petrovna Tarapygin who lived in the almshouse by the cemetery. She was said, on her way home from visiting a friend, to have forced her way into the crowd of spectators through natural curiosity. Seeing what was going on, she cried out,
"What a shame!" and spat on the ground.
For this it was said she had been seized and flogged too.
This story not only appeared in print, but in our excitement we positively got up a subscription for her benefit.
I subscribed twenty kopecks myself.
And would you believe it?
It appears now that there was no old woman called Tarapygin living in the almshouse at all!
I went to inquire at the almshouse by the cemetery myself; they had never heard of anyone called Tarapygin there, and, what's more, they were quite offended when I told them the story that was going round.
I mention this fabulous Avdotya Petrovna because what happened to her (if she really had existed) very nearly happened to Stepan Trofimovitch. Possibly, indeed, his adventure may have been at the bottom of the ridiculous tale about the old woman, that is, as the gossip went on growing he was transformed into this old dame.
What I find most difficult to understand is how he came to slip away from me as soon as he got into the square.
As I had a misgiving of something very unpleasant, I wanted to take him round the square straight to the entrance to the governor's, but my own curiosity was roused, and I stopped only for one minute to question the first person I came across, and suddenly I looked round and found Stepan Trofimovitch no longer at my side.
Instinctively I darted off to look for him in the most dangerous place; something made me feel that his sledge, too, was flying downhill.
And I did, as a fact, find him in the very centre of things.
I remember I seized him by the arm; but he looked quietly and proudly at me with an air of immense authority.
"Cher," he pronounced in a voice which quivered on a breaking note, "if they are dealing with people so unceremoniously before us, in an open square, what is to be expected from that man, for instance... if he happens to act on his own authority?"
And shaking with indignation and with an intense desire to defy them, he pointed a menacing, accusing finger at Flibusterov, who was gazing at us open-eyed two paces away.
"That man!" cried the latter, blind with rage.
"What man?
And who are you?" He stepped up to him, clenching his fist.
"Who are you?" he roared ferociously, hysterically, and desperately. (I must mention that he knew Stepan Trofimovitch perfectly well by sight.) Another moment and he would have certainly seized him by the collar; but luckily, hearing him shout, Lembke turned his head.
He gazed intensely but with perplexity at Stepan Trofimovitch, seeming to consider something, and suddenly he shook his hand impatiently.
Flibusterov was checked.
I drew Stepan Trofimovitch out of the crowd, though perhaps he may have wished to retreat himself.