But it was too late.
All through the quadrille Andrey Antonovitch gazed at the dancers with a sort of angry perplexity, and when he heard the comments of the audience he began looking about him uneasily.
Then for the first time he caught sight of some of the persons who had come from the refreshment-room; there was an expression of extreme wonder in his face.
Suddenly there was a loud roar of laughter at a caper that was cut in the quadrille. The editor of the "menacing periodical, not a Petersburg one," who was dancing with the cudgel in his hands, felt utterly unable to endure the spectacled gaze of "honest Russian thought," and not knowing how to escape it, suddenly in the last figure advanced to meet him standing on his head, which was meant, by the way, to typify the continual turning upside down of common sense by the menacing non-Petersburg gazette.
As Lyamshin was the only one who could walk standing on his head, he had undertaken to represent the editor with the cudgel.
Yulia Mihailovna had had no idea that anyone was going to walk on his head.
"They concealed that from me, they concealed it," she repeated to me afterwards in despair and indignation.
The laughter from the crowd was, of course, provoked not by the allegory, which interested no one, but simply by a man's walking on his head in a swallow-tail coat.
Lembke flew into a rage and shook with fury.
"Rascal!" he cried, pointing to Lyamshin, "take hold of the scoundrel, turn him over... turn his legs... his head... so that his head's up... up!"
Lyamshin jumped on to his feet.
The laughter grew louder.
"Turn out all the scoundrels who are laughing!" Lembke prescribed suddenly.
There was an angry roar and laughter in the crowd.
"You can't do like that, your Excellency."
"You mustn't abuse the public."
"You are a fool yourself!" a voice cried suddenly from a corner.
"Filibusters!" shouted someone from the other end of the room.
Lembke looked round quickly at the shout and turned pale.
A vacant smile came on to his lips, as though he suddenly understood and remembered something.
"Gentlemen," said Yulia Mihailovna, addressing the crowd which was pressing round them, as she drew her husband away—"gentlemen, excuse Andrey Antonovitch. Andrey Antonovitch is unwell... excuse... forgive him, gentlemen."
I positively heard her say "forgive him."
It all happened very quickly.
But I remember for a fact that a section of the public rushed out of the hall immediately after those words of Yulia Mihailovna's as though panic-stricken.
I remember one hysterical, tearful feminine shriek:
"Ach, the same thing again!"
And in the retreat of the guests, which was almost becoming a crush, another bomb exploded exactly as in the afternoon.
"Fire!
All the riverside quarter is on fire!"
I don't remember where this terrible cry rose first, whether it was first raised in the hall, or whether someone ran upstairs from the entry, but it was followed by such alarm that I can't attempt to describe it.
More than half the guests at the ball came from the quarter beyond the river, and were owners or occupiers of wooden houses in that district.
They rushed to the windows, pulled back the curtains in a flash, and tore down the blinds.
The riverside was in flames.
The fire, it is true, was only beginning, but it was in flames in three separate places—and that was what was alarming.
"Arson!
The Shpigulin men!" roared the crowd.
I remember some very characteristic exclamations:
"I've had a presentiment in my heart that there'd be arson, I've had a presentiment of it these last few days!"
"The Shpigulin men, the Shpigulin men, no one else!"
"We were all lured here on purpose to set fire to it!"
This last most amazing exclamation came from a woman; it was an unintentional involuntary shriek of a housewife whose goods were burning.
Every one rushed for the door.
I won't describe the crush in the vestibule over sorting out cloaks, shawls, and pelisses, the shrieks of the frightened women, the weeping of the young ladies.
I doubt whether there was any theft, but it was no wonder that in such disorder some went away without their wraps because they were unable to find them, and this grew into a legend with many additions, long preserved in the town.
Lembke and Yulia Mihailovna were almost crushed by the crowd at the doors.
"Stop, every one!
Don't let anyone out!" yelled Lembke, stretching out his arms menacingly towards the crowding people.
"Every one without exception to be strictly searched at once!"
A storm of violent oaths rose from the crowd.
"Andrey Antonovitch!