An officer detachment strode by with firm steps, accompanied by grinning urchins, and the laughter of elegant ladies.
The crowd turned out of Sadovaya into Dvoryanskaya Street, past the grotesque splendour of the green-tiled Kurlin mansion.
Somebody plunged into the crowd....
"What's the matter?
What's happened?"
"There are Bolsheviks in that yard, officer—they're hiding behind the wood pile, two of them."
"Aha! Go on, gentlemen, go on!"
"Where are those officers off to?"
"No panic, please, gentlemen, no panic!"
"They've found some Cheka men!"
"Dmitri Stepanovich, let's step aside—you never know...."
Shots rang out.
The crowd swayed.
People took to their heels, losing their hats and caps as they ran.
Dmitri Stepanovich, panting, found himself once more in Dvoryanskaya Street.
He felt responsible for all that was going on.
Arrived at the square he glanced through narrowed eyes at the obelisk concealing the statue of Alexander II.
Extending his arm, he declared in a loud, angry voice:
"The Bolsheviks are ready to destroy everything Russian.
They want to make the Russian people forget their own history.
We have here a perfectly harmless statue of the tsar-liberator.
Remove those beastly boards and foul rags."
It was his first speech to the people.
Some pert lads in peaked caps—shop assistants, probably—immediately began shouting:
"Break it up!"
There was a rending sound as the boards were torn off the statue.
Dmitri Stepanovich proceeded further.
The crowd was thinning.
The shots from across the river could be heard more distinctly.
A man came running towards the doctor from the direction of the river.
His dark hair fell over his eyes, and he had on nothing but dripping wet hose.
His broad chest was tattooed.
Women ran screaming into gateways.
He made a sudden turn and rushed down the slope towards the Volga.
Three more appeared, and then others came running up, one at a time, wet, half-naked, panting. There were cries of:
"Bolsheviks!
Kill them!"
Like snipe alarmed by the hunter's fire, they rushed blindly down the slope towards the landing stage.
Dmitri Stepanovich, profoundly excited, also started running, and seized upon a sickly-looking individual with no eyelashes and a crooked nose.
"I'm a minister of the new government!" he exclaimed. "A machine gun is needed here immediately.
Go for one at once, I order you to do so!"
"I don't speak Russian!" replied the sickly-looking individual with an obvious effort.
The doctor pushed him aside. The matter was of the greatest urgency. He went himself to look for a Czech with a machine gun ... and in a gateway, over which a red star hung crookedly, he came upon yet another Bolshevik— a copper-skinned man with a shaven head and a Tatar beard.
His military tunic was torn, and blood was trickling from his shoulder.
He was turning his head from side to side, showing his small teeth and snapping like a dog.
On his face was imprinted the desperate fear of death.
The crowd fell upon him, the women in particular uttering frenzied cries.
Umbrellas and sticks were flourished, clenched fists were shaken.... A retired general, with an enormous cap almost slipping off his baldish head, and a medal jigging up and down at the base of his flabby throat, stood on the porch steps, brandishing his mottled fist right in the Bolshevik's face and trying to shout everyone down.
"Go on, gentlemen! He's a commissar.... Be ruthless! My own son is a Red. What a grief! Find him, gentlemen, I beseech you, bring my son to me.... I'll kill him here, in front of all of you....
I'll kill my own son.... There must be no quarter shown to this one, either...."