We made our way as best we could through the crowd of people, who all seemed moving in the same direction, the count, evidently a prey to the gravest anxiety, talking as if to himself and imprecating his own carelessness.

We turned the corner of a street and reached the edge of the great square.  It was filled with a vast concourse of people.  At the very moment in which we reached it a great burst of cheering rose from the crowd.  We could see over the heads of the people that a man had appeared on the balcony of the Government Building, holding a paper in his hand.  His appearance was evidently a signal for the outburst of cheers, accompanied by the waving of handkerchiefs.  The man raised his hand in a gesture of authority.  German training is deep.  Silence fell instantly upon the assembled populace.  We had time in the momentary pause to examine, as closely as the distance permitted, the figure upon the balcony.  The man was dressed in the blue overall suit of a workingman.  He was bare-headed.  His features, so far as we could tell, were those of a man well up in years, but his frame was rugged and powerful.  Then he began to speak.

“Friends and comrades!” he called out in a great voice that resounded through the square.  “I have to announce that a New Revolution has been completed.”

A wild cheer woke from the people.

“The Bolsheviks’ Republic is overthrown.  The Bolsheviks are aristocrats.  Let them die.”

“Thank Heaven for this costume!” I heard Count Boobenstein murmur at my side.  Then he seized his pea-green hat and waved it in the air, shouting:  “Down with the Bolsheviks!”

All about us the cry was taken up.

One saw everywhere in the crowd men pulling off their sheepskin coats and tramping them under foot with the shout, “Down with Bolshevism!” To my surprise I observed that most of the men had on blue overalls beneath their Russian costumes.  In a few moments the crowd seemed transformed into a vast mass of mechanics.

The speaker raised his hand again.  “We have not yet decided what the new Government will be”—­

A great cheer from the people.

“Nor do we propose to state who will be the leaders of it.”

Renewed cheers.

“But this much we can say.  It is to be a free, universal, Pan-German Government of love.”

Cheers.

“Meantime, be warned.  Whoever speaks against it will be shot:  anybody who dares to lift a finger will be hanged.  A proclamation of Brotherhood will be posted all over the city.  If anybody dares to touch it, or to discuss it, or to look at or to be seen reading it, he will be hanged to a lamp post.”

Loud applause greeted this part of the speech while the faces of the people, to my great astonishment, seemed filled with genuine relief and beamed with unmistakable enthusiasm.

“And now,” continued the speaker, “I command you, you dogs, to disperse quietly and go home.  Move quickly, swine that you are, or we shall open fire upon you with machine guns.”