them to break up. But
the workmen remained obstinately, like a flock of sheep at a fence, and
replied laconically that they had come to see "the general himself"; it
was evident that they were firmly determined. The unnatural shouting
of the police ceased, and was quickly succeeded by deliberations,
mysterious whispered instructions, and stern, fussy perplexity, which
wrinkled the brows of the police officers. The head of the police
preferred to await the arrival of the "governor himself." It was not
true that he galloped to the spot with three horses at full speed, and
began hitting out right and left before he alighted from his carriage.
It's true that he used to dash about and was fond of dashing about at
full speed in a carriage with a yellow back, and while his trace-horses,
who were so trained to carry their heads that they looked "positively
perverted," galloped more and more frantically, rousing the enthusiasm
of all the shopkeepers in the bazaar, he would rise up in the carriage,
stand erect, holding on by a strap which had been fixed on purpose at
the side, and with his right arm extended into space like a figure on a
monument, survey the town majestically. But in the present case he did
not use his fists, and though as he got out of the carriage he could not
refrain from a forcible expression, this was simply done to keep up
his popularity. There is a still more absurd story that soldiers were
brought up with bayonets, and that a telegram was sent for artillery and
Cossacks; those are legends which are not believed now even by those
who invented them. It's an absurd story, too, that barrels of water were
brought from the fire brigade, and that people were drenched with water
from them. The simple fact is that Ilya Ilyitch shouted in his heat that
he wouldn't let one of them come dry out of the water; probably this was
the foundation of the barrel legend which got into the columns of the
Petersburg and Moscow newspapers. Probably the most accurate version was
that at first all the available police formed a cordon round the crowd,
and a messenger was sent for Lembke, a police superintendent, who dashed
off in the carriage belonging to the head of the police on the way to
Skvoreshniki, knowing that Lembke had gone there in his carriage half an
hour before.

But I must confess that I am still unable to answer the question how
they could at first sight, from the first moment, have transformed an
insignificant, th