I could not see his face.  I saw his arms wave, and the fire behind him exaggerated his figure and then dropped it into a straggling silhouette against the snow.  The street seemed deserted except for this group, although now I could hear distant shouting on every side of me, and the monotonous clap-clap-clap-clap of a machine-gun.

I heard him say, “Tovaristchi! now is your time!  Don’t hesitate in the sacred cause of freedom!  As our brethren did in the famous days of the French Revolution, so must we do now.  All the Army is coming over to our side.  The Preobrojenski have come over to us and have arrested their officers and taken their arms.  We must finish with Protopopoff and our other tyrants, and see that we have a just rule. Tovaristchi! there will never be such a chance again, and you will repent for ever if you have not played your part in the great fight for freedom!”

So it went on.  It did not seem that his audience was greatly impressed.  It was bewildered and dazed.  But the fire leapt up behind him giving him a legendary splendour, and the whole picture was romantic and unreal like a gaudy painting on a coloured screen.

We hurried through into the Nevski, and this we found nearly deserted.  The trams of course had stopped, a few figures hurried along, and once an Isvostchick went racing down towards the river.

“Well, now, we seem to be out of it,” said Bohun, with a sigh of relief.  “I must say I’m not sorry.  I don’t mind France, where you can tell which is the front and which the back, but this kind of thing does get on one’s nerves.  I daresay it’s only local.  We shall find them all as easy as anything at the Astoria, and wondering what we’re making a fuss about.”

At that moment we were joined by an English merchant whom we both knew, a stout elderly man who had lived all his life in Russia.  I was surprised to find him in a state of extreme terror.  I had always known him as a calm, conceited, stupid fellow, with a great liking for Russian ladies.  This pastime he was able as a bachelor to enjoy to the full.  Now, however, instead of the ruddy, coarse, self-confident merchant there was a pallid, trembling jelly-fish.

“I say, you fellows,” he asked, catching my arm.  “Where are you off to?”

“We’re off to the Astoria,” I answered.

“Let me come with you.  I’m not frightened, not at all—­all the same I don’t want to be left alone.  I was in the 1905 affair.  That was enough for me.  Where are they firing—­do you know?”

“All over the place,” said Bohun, enjoying himself.  “They’ll be down here in a minute.”

“Good God!  Do you really think so?  It’s terrible—­these fellows—­once they get loose they stick at nothing....  I remember in 1905....  Good heavens!  Where had we better go?  It’s very exposed here, isn’t it?”

“It’s very exposed everywhere,” said Bohun.  “I doubt whether any of us are alive in the morning.”