So—­accepted in the ranks of those that go wherever they wish, that do whatever their left foot feels like doing, those that continue to remodel the country, those that are so free in every action—­I sat near the powerful man,—­Comrade Nachman—­as equal to equal.

But—­what I really could not conceive,—­was the range of his duties; he was judge, and governor, and military commander, and lawyer, and coroner, and administrator of the city, and the notary public—­all that used to be connected with business—­was his concern....  They could not do it in the olden days; they had to have a specially trained man for every branch before,—­and now!

“How perfectly you perform all of these different duties,” I said.

42

I am a jailer; I guess the first in our family.

Together with Comrade Adolf Pashinsky,—­a Pole from the dreadnaught “Andrey Pervozvanny,”—­I am walking on the Great Liberty Street, and inside of the fence, watching the prisoners in the Mansion, and watching to see that supreme justice—­the will of the people—­be done.

My companion—­is a muscular man of thirty, without front teeth; his thin lips are always curved in a bad smile; his brain is such that he cannot think and speak of anything that would not be vulgar and vicious.

The very first night we came to change sentinels—­I felt embarrassed, as I do not know the ritual; but—­there is nothing military about these things nowadays, all is abolished.  The soldiers come to change sentinels, talk freely, laugh loudly.  Instead of military traditions—­like parole, pass-words, exchange of salutes, etc., etc.,—­they ask: 

“Ah, howdy!  What are “they” (meaning the prisoners) doing?  Anything to look at?  All right—­now you go, we’ll stay.”

They have, however, a tradition.  When the changed jailors are assembled near the entrance,—­they start to knock on the rain pipes of the Mansion with their rifles, to throw sand and small stones into the windows of the Heir and the Princesses.  When they think enough frightening has been done, they start to sing something hideous and pornographic.

  “She went to the ma-a-rket,
  Bought a bell as a locket....”

begins a thin trembling voice very calmly and even bashfully, as if nothing bad will come out of this quiet song.  And then, suddenly, a chorus of twelve big fat swine would belch the notorious refrain: 

  “Ah, you brunette of mine,
  O-oh, curly girl of mine....”

and so forth, with the licentious words of this song accompanying it with whistles and jazzing with bayonettes, field-pans and general noise.

I tried to analyze all of this.  Why?  Why is there such a hatred for these,—­this poor man, these five women and a boy?  Such unnecessary torture of people of the past,—­nothing but a man who awaits the end of his tragedy, nothing but a frail boy, nothing but five trembling ladies.  And the picture of the old woman that broke her hip on the deck—­and provoked laughter, comes to me.