... I don't blame them--but suddenly
proud people were gone, and I was crying without knowing it--simply
because that great crowd of poor people went pushing along, all talking
under the sunny sky as freely as they pleased.
"I began to look about me. I saw that there were papers posted on the
walls. They were those proclamations, you know, of Rodziancko's new
government, saying that while everything was unsettled, Milyukoff,
Rodziancko, and the others would take charge in order to keep order and
discipline. It seemed to me that there was little need to talk about
discipline. Had beggars appeared there in the road I believed that the
crowd would have stripped off their clothes and given them, rather than
that they should want.
"I stood by one proclamation and read it out to the little crowd. They
repeated the names to themselves, but they did not seem to care much.
'The Czar's wicked they tell me,' said one man to me. 'And all our
troubles come from him.'
"'It doesn't matter,' said another. 'There'll be plenty of bread now.'
"And indeed what did names matter now? I couldn't believe my eyes or my
ears, Ivan Andreievitch.
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