The first subterranean shocks of this catastrophe began in the heat of summer, at the time of the annual summer fair, which this year was unbelievably brilliant.  Many circumstances contributed to its extraordinary success, multitudes, and the stupendousness of the deals concluded during it:  the building in the vicinity of three new sugar refineries, and the unusually abundant crop of wheat, and, in particular, of sugar beets; the commencement of work in the laying of an electric trolley and of canalization; the building of a new road to the distance of 750 versts; but mainly, the fever of building which seized the whole town, all the banks and financial institutions, and all the houseowners.  Factories for making brick sprang up on the outskirts of the town like mushrooms.  A grandiose agricultural exposition opened.  Two new steamer lines came into being, and they, together with the previously established ones, frenziedly competed with each other, transporting freight and pilgrims.  In competition they reached such a state, that they lowered their passenger rates for the third class from seventy-five kopecks to five, three, two, and even one kopeck.  In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the unequal struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free passage to all the third-class passengers.  Then its competitor at once added to the free passage half a loaf of white bread as well.  But the biggest and most significant enterprise of this city was the engineering of the extensive river port, which had attracted to it hundreds of thousands of labourers and which cost God knows what money.

It must also be added, that the city was at this time celebrating the millennial anniversary of its famous abbey, the most honoured and the richest among all the monasteries of Russia.  From all the ends of Russia, out of Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen Ocean, from the extreme south—­the Black and Caspian Seas—­ countless pilgrims had gathered for the worship of the local sanctities:  the abbey’s saints, reposing deep underground in calcareous caverns.  Suffice it to say, that the monastery gave shelter, and food of a sort, to forty thousand people daily; while those for whom there was not enough room lay, at night, side by side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes of the abbey.

This was a summer out of some fairy-tale.  The population of the city increased well-nigh fourfold through every sort of newly-come people.  Stone-masons, carpenters, painters, engineers, technicians, foreigners, agriculturists, brokers, shady business men, river navigators, unoccupied knaves, tourists, thieves, card sharpers—­they all overflowed the city, and not in a single hotel, the most dirty and dubious one, was there a vacant room.  Insane prices were paid for quarters.  The stock exchange gambled on a grand scale, as never before or since that summer.  Money in millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and thence to a third pair.  In one hour colossal