...
Oh, but I cared for Nina and Vera and Nicholas--yes, and Jerry too! I
wanted to see them happy and at peace before I left them--in especial
Nicholas.
And Semyonov came closer to them and closer, following some plan of his
own and yet, after all, finally like a man driven by a power,
constructed it might be, out of his own very irony.
I made a kind of bet with fate that by Easter Day every one should be
happy by then.
Next day, the 15th of April, was the great funeral for the victims of
the Revolution. I believe, although of course at that time I had heard
nothing, that there had been great speculation about the day, many
people thinking that it would be an excuse for further trouble, the
Monarchists rising, or the "Soviet" attacking the Provisional
Government, or Milyukoff and his followers attacking the Soviet. They
need not have been alarmed. No one had as yet realised the lengths that
Slavonic apathy may permit itself....
I went down about half-past ten to the Square at the end of the Sadovaya
and found it filled with a vast concourse of peasants, not only the
Square was filled, but the Sadovaya as far as the eye could see.
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