When I woke on Saturday morning, after my evening with Semyonov, I was conscious that I was relieved as though I had finally settled some affair whose uncertainty had worried me.  I lay in bed chuckling as though I had won a triumph over Semyonov, as though I said to myself, “Well, I needn’t be afraid of him any longer.”  It was a most beautiful day, crystal clear, with a stainless blue sky and the snow like a carpet of jewels, and I thought I would go and see how the world was behaving.  I walked down the Morskaia, finding it quiet enough, although I fancied that the faces of the passers-by were anxious and nervous.  Nevertheless, the brilliant sunshine and the clear peaceful beauty of the snow reassured me—­the world was too beautiful and well-ordered a place to allow disturbance.  Then at the corner of the English shop where the Morskaia joins the Nevski Prospect, I realised that something had occurred.  It was as though the world that I had known so long, and with whom I felt upon such intimate terms, had suddenly screwed round its face and showed me a new grin.

The broad space of the Nevski was swallowed up by a vast crowd, very quiet, very amiable, moving easily, almost slothfully, in a slowly stirring stream.

As I looked up the Nevski I realised what it was that had given me the first positive shock of an altered world.  The trams had stopped.  I had never seen the Nevski without its trams; I had always been forced to stand on the brink, waiting whilst the stream of Isvostchicks galloped past and the heavy, lumbering, coloured elephants tottered along, amiable and slow and good-natured like everything else in that country.  Now the elephants were gone; the Isvostchicks were gone.  So far as my eye could see, the black stream flooded the shining way.

I mingled with the crowd and found myself slowly propelled in an amiable, aimless manner up the street.

“What’s the matter?” I asked a cheerful, fat little “Chinovnik,” who seemed to be tethered to me by some outside invincible force.

“I don’t know....” he said.  “They’re saying there’s been some shooting up by the Nicholas Station—­but that was last night.  Some women had a procession about food.... Tak oni gavoryat—­so they say....  But I don’t know.  People have just come out to see what they can see....”

And so they had—­women, boys, old men, little children.  I could see no signs of ill-temper anywhere, only a rather open-mouthed wonder and sense of expectation.

A large woman near me, with a shawl over her head and carrying a large basket, laughed a great deal.  “No, I wouldn’t go,” she said.  “You go and get it for yourself—­I’m not coming.  Not I, I was too clever for that.”  Then she would turn, shrilly calling for some child who was apparently lost in the crowd.  “Sacha!...  Ah!  Sacha!” she cried—­and turning again, “Eh! look at the Cossack!...  There’s a fine Cossack!”

It was then that I noticed the Cossacks.  They were lined up along the side of the pavement, and sometimes they would suddenly wheel and clatter along the pavement itself, to the great confusion of the crowd who would scatter in every direction.