ght it down furiously, as though pounding an adversary
to powder. A frantic yell rose from the whole hall, there was a
deafening roar of applause; almost half the audience was applauding:
their enthusiasm was excusable. Russia was being put to shame publicly,
before every one. Who could fail to roar with delight?

"This is the real thing! Come, this is something like! Hurrah! Yes, this
is none of your aesthetics!"

The maniac went on ecstatically:

"Twenty years have passed since then. Universities have been opened and
multiplied. Military drill has passed into a legend; officers are too
few by thousands, the railways have eaten up all the capital and have
covered Russia as with a spider's web, so that in another fifteen years
one will perhaps get somewhere. Bridges are rarely on fire, and fires in
towns occur only at regular intervals, in turn, at the proper season.
In the law courts judgments are as wise as Solomon's, and the jury only
take bribes through the struggle for existence, to escape starvation.
The serfs are free, and flog one another instead of being flogged by
the land-owners. Seas and oceans of vodka are consumed to support the
budget, and in Novgorod, opposite the ancient and useless St. Sophia,
there has been solemnly put up a colossal bronze globe to celebrate a
thousand years of disorder and confusion; Europe scowls and begins to
be uneasy again.... Fifteen years of reforms! And yet never even in the
most grotesque periods of its madness has Russia sunk..."

The last words could not be heard in the roar of the crowd. One could
see him again raise his arm and bring it down triumphantly again.
Enthusiasm was beyond all bounds: people yelled, clapped their hands,
even some of the ladies shouted: "Enough, you can't beat that!" Some
might have been drunk. The orator scanned them all and seemed revelling
in his own triumph. I caught a glimpse of Lembke in indescribable
excitement, pointing something out to somebody. Yulia Mihailovna, with a
pale face, said something in haste to the prince, who had run up to her.
But at that moment a group of six men, officials more or less, burst on
to the platform, seized the orator and dragged him behind the scenes. I
can't understand how he managed to tear himself away from them, but he
did escape, darted up to the edge of the platform again and succeeded in
shouting again, at the top of his voice, waving his fist: "But never has
Russia sunk..."

But he was dragged