Once
Rodziancko came in and began shouting, '_Tovaristchi! Tovaristchi!_...'
but his voice soon gave away, and he went back into the Salle Catherine
again. The Socialists had it their way. There were so many, and their
voices were so fresh and the soldiers liked to listen to them. 'Land for
everybody!' they shouted. 'And Bread and Peace! Hurrah! Hurrah!' cried
the soldiers.
"'That's all very well,' said a huge man near me. 'But Nicholas is
coming, and to-morrow he will eat us all up!'
"But no one seemed to care. They were all mad, and I was mad too. It was
the drunkenness of dust. It got in our heads and our brains. We all
shouted. I began to shout too, although I didn't know what it was that I
was shouting.
"A grimy soldier caught me round the neck and kissed me. 'Land for
everybody!' he cried. 'Have some tea, _Tovaristch_!' and I shared his
tea with him.
"Then through the dust and noise I suddenly saw Boris Grogoff! That was
an astonishing thing. You see I had dissociated all this from my private
life. I had even, during these last hours, forgotten Vera, perhaps for
the very first moment since I met her.
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