We were all on the balcony by now—­the stout Burrows, Peroxide, and another lady typist, Watson, the thin and most admirable secretary (he held the place together by his diligence and order), two Russian clerks, Henry, and I.

We all leaned over the railings and looked down into the street beneath us.  To our left the Fontanka Bridge was quite deserted—­then, suddenly, an extraordinary procession poured across it.  At that same moment (at any rate it seems so now to me on looking back) the sun disappeared, leaving a world of pale grey mist shot with gold and purple.  The stars were, many of them, already out, piercing with their sharp cold brilliance the winter sky.

We could not at first see of what exactly the crowd now pouring over the bridge was composed.  Then, as it turned and came down our street, it revealed itself as something so theatrical and melodramatic as to be incredible.  Incredible, I say, because the rest of the world was not theatrical with it.  That was always to be the amazing feature of the new scene into which, without knowing it, I was at that moment stepping.  In Galicia the stage had been set—­ruined villages, plague-stricken peasants, shell-holes, trenches, roads cut to pieces, huge trees levelled to the ground, historic chateaux pillaged and robbed.  But here the world was still the good old jog-trot world that one had always known; the shops and hotels and theatres remained as they had always been.  There would remain, I believe, for ever those dull Jaeger undergarments in the windows of the bazaar, and the bound edition of Tchekov in the book-shop just above the Moika, and the turtle and the gold-fish in the aquarium near Elisseieff; and whilst those things were there I could not believe in melodrama.

And we did not believe.  We dug our feet into the snow, and leaned over the balcony railings absorbed with amused interest.  The procession consisted of a number of motor lorries, and on these lorries soldiers were heaped.  I can use no other word because, indeed, they seemed to be all piled upon one another, some kneeling forward, some standing, some sitting, and all with their rifles pointing outwards until the lorries looked like hedgehogs.  Many of the rifles had pieces of red cloth attached to them, and one lorry displayed proudly a huge red flag that waved high in air with a sort of flaunting arrogance of its own.  On either side of the lorries, filling the street, was the strangest mob of men, women, and children.  There seemed to be little sign of order or discipline amongst them as they were all shouting different cries:  “Down the Fontanka!” “No, the Duma!” “To the Nevski!” “No, no, Tovaristchi (comrades), to the Nicholas Station!”

Such a rabble was it that I remember that my first thought was of pitying indulgence.  So this was the grand outcome of Boris Grogoff’s eloquence, and the Rat’s plots for plunder!—­a fitting climax to such vain dreams.  I saw the Cossack, that ebony figure of Sunday night.  Ten such men, and this rabble was dispersed for ever!  I felt inclined to lean over and whisper to them, “Quick! quick!  Go home!...  They’ll be here in a moment and catch you!”