He took the noon train from Batraki, and at 5 p. m. set off from the station at Samara for Dr. Bulavin's flat.
Once again he was attired in the torn and crumpled tunic with lieutenant colonel's shoulder straps.
On the way there, striking the tops of his boots with the cane that he had used to arouse the guerrillas the night before, he read with the most lively curiosity, as if they were things not seen for ages, the theatre notices, appeals and advertisements he passed.
They were all in two languages: Russian (in prereform spelling) and Czech. His glass of lemonade in hand, Dmitri Stepanovich Bulavin, pulling out the napkin tucked into the top of his waistcoat, and making imposing munching movements with his lips, began his speech in the deep, significant voice recently acquired by him in his capacity as undersecretary.
"Gentlemen, permit me...."
It was a banquet got up for the municipal representatives to celebrate the victorious advance of the Constituent Assembly's army in the north.
Simbirsk and Kazan had been occupied.
The Bolsheviks seemed to have finally lost the Middle Volga district.
At Melekes, the remnants of the Red Cavalry, thirty-five hundred strong, were making frantic efforts to break through encirclement.
In Kazan, which was taken by storm by the Czechs, twenty-four thousand poods of gold, the equivalent of upwards of six hundred million rubles—over half the State gold reserve—had been seized.
This fact was so incredible, so overwhelming, that the mind had not yet been able to cope with its infinite consequences.
The gold was on its way to Samara.
So far, no one had put in a definite claim for it, but the Czechs had apparently decided to place it at the disposal of the Samara Committee of members of the Constituent Assembly.
The Samara merchantry had their own ideas as to the fate of the gold, but so far had refrained from expressing them.
The ardent admiration for the victorious Czechs had reached fever point.
The banquet was crowded and animated.
Captain Cecek, the Czech Army Commander, and the hero of the day, was the centre of a smiling galaxy formed of the society ladies of Samara; among them were such stars as Arzhanova, Kurlina, and Shekhobalova, the proprietresses of five-storey flour mills, grain elevators, steamship companies, and whole districts of fallow black earth. They were resplendent in diamonds the size of cobnuts, and in gowns which, if no longer quite fashionable, had at any rate, in their day, come from Paris and Vienna.
Like all heroes, Cecek was adorably simple and gracious.
True, his sturdy body was rather too warm, and the tight collar of his faultlessly-cut tunic was digging into his crimson neck, but his florid youthful face, with the short reddish moustache and blazing eyes, seemed fairly to ask for kisses on both cheeks.
The enchanting smile never left his lips, as if he renounced all personal glory, as if the society of ladies was a thousand times dearer to him than the thunder of victory and the capture of provincial towns and trains full of gold.
Opposite him sat a heavy, middle-aged military man with a white aiglet.
His egglike skull was naked and massive, a veritable bulwark of authority.
The most noticeable feature of his fat, clean-shaven face were the thick lips: he never stopped chewing, and contracting and retracting his eyebrows, while his glance roved eagerly over the rich display of hors d'oeuvres.
The wineglass was lost in his great fist, it was obvious he was more accustomed to holding tumblers.
He took brief sips, throwing back his head.
His small, cunning blue eyes never rested for long on anyone, as if he were all the time on the alert here.
The other military men bent towards him with respectful attention, for this was the Orenburg ataman Dutov, the hero of the Ural Cossacks, a recently-arrived visitor.
A few seats away, between two pretty women, one a light blonde, the other auburn-haired, sat M. Janeau, the French ambassador, in a light grey cutaway and dazzling shirt front.
His small face, with the exquisite moustache and pointed nose, bore the signs of extreme dissipation.
He was trilling away, rolling his r's, now bending over the well-exposed charms of the auburn lady (who rewarded him by a tap on his hand with a flower), now over the pink-and-pearl shoulder of the blonde, who giggled as if he were tickling her.
Both ladies understood French, when not spoken too quickly.
It was obvious that poor Janeau was desperately enamoured of these feminine charms.
This did not, however, prevent him from turning, whenever the conversation flagged, towards Brikin, a solid flour-mill proprietor, who had only just arrived from Omsk, or from raising his glass to the brilliant achievements of Ataman Dutov.
The interest displayed by M. Janeau in Siberian flour and Orenburg meat and butter, showed his passionate loyalty to the White movement: in moments of food crisis, the French ambassador could always offer the government fifty truckloads of flour or other commodities.... There were sceptics who declared that there would be no harm in inviting M. Janeau, as any decent government would, to show his ambassadorial credentials.... But the government preferred the more tactful way of confidence in its allies.
There was yet another notable foreigner at table— the swarthy, quick-eyed Signer Piccolomini (who vowed that this was his real name).
He represented, somewhat vaguely, the Italian nation, the Italian people.
His short sky-blue uniform was adorned with silver braid, and enormous general's epaulettes swayed up and down on his shoulders.
He was supposed to be forming a special Italian battalion in Samara.
The government asked in amazement:
"Where the devil does he think he'll find Italians here?"
But they gave him money. After all, allies are allies....
No one attached the least importance to him in bourgeois circles.
The only government representatives at the banquet were nonparty members like Dr. Bulavin, and Semyon Semyonovich Govyadin, who had risen high on the ladder of officialdom, and was now assistant chief of counter-intelligence.
The time for mutual enthusiasm, when the Bolsheviks were overthrown, was past.
The Constituent Assembly Committee, confirmed S.R.'s to a man, was prating such stuff about the attainments of the revolution, that no one but the Czechs, who really had not the faintest insight into Russian affairs, could go on believing in it.
In the initial stages, when a coup d'etat had to be brought off, and it was necessary to pacify the workers and peasants, the S'.R. government had, of course, been a godsend.
The Samara tradesmen themselves had echoed the S.R. slogans.
But the Volga had now been freed from Khvalinsk to Kazan. Denikin had conquered almost the entire North Caucasus, Krasnov was nearing Tsaritsyn, Dutov had cleared up the Urals, and imposing White atamans were turning up almost every day in Siberia—and those long-haired tramps, Volsky, Brushvit, Klimushkin and the rest of the crew, meeting in the splendid palace of the Samara Marshal of Nobility, were still hankering after a Constituent Assembly. Faugh!
The big merchants had begun resolutely going over to quite different slogans—simpler, firmer, easier to grasp....
Most of what Dmitri Stepanovich said was addressed to the foreigners present: