d
undertaken to represent the editor with the cudgel. Yulia Mihailovna had
had no idea that anyone was going to walk on his head. "They concealed
that from me, they concealed it," she repeated to me afterwards in
despair and indignation. The laughter from the crowd was, of course,
provoked not by the allegory, which interested no one, but simply by
a man's walking on his head in a swallow-tail coat. Lembke flew into a
rage and shook with fury.

"Rascal!" he cried, pointing to Lyamshin, "take hold of the scoundrel,
turn him over... turn his legs... his head... so that his head's up...
up!"

Lyamshin jumped on to his feet. The laughter grew louder.

"Turn out all the scoundrels who are laughing!" Lembke prescribed
suddenly.

There was an angry roar and laughter in the crowd.

"You can't do like that, your Excellency."

"You mustn't abuse the public."

"You are a fool yourself!" a voice cried suddenly from a corner.

"Filibusters!" shouted some one from the other end of the room.

Lembke looked round quickly at the shout and turned pale. A vacant smile
came on to his lips, as though he suddenly understood and remembered
something.

"Gentlemen," said Yulia Mihailovna, addressing the crowd which was
pressing round them, as she drew her husband away--"gentlemen, excuse
Andrey Antonovitch. Andrey Antonovitch is unwell... excuse... forgive
him, gentlemen."

I positively heard her say "forgive him." It all happened very quickly.
But I remember for a fact that a section of the public rushed out of
the hall immediately after those words of Yulia Mihailovna's as though
panic-stricken. I remember one hysterical, tearful feminine shriek:

"Ach, the same thing again!"

And in the retreat of the guests, which was almost becoming a crush,
another bomb exploded exactly as in the afternoon.

"Fire! All the riverside quarter is on fire!"

I don't remember where this terrible cry rose first, whether it was
first raised in the hall, or whether some one ran upstairs from the
entry, but it was followed by such alarm that I can't attempt to
describe it. More than half the guests at the ball came from the quarter
beyond the river, and were owners or occupiers of wooden houses in that
district. They rushed to the windows, pulled back the curtains in a
flash, and tore down the blinds. The riverside was in flames. The fire,
it is true, was only beginning, but it was in flames in three separate
places--and that was what was alarm