is seat, and told the coachman to drive to the town. The
police-superintendent followed in the droshky.

I imagine that he had vague impressions of many interesting things of
all sorts on the way, but I doubt whether he had any definite idea or
any settled intention as he drove into the open space in front of his
house. But no sooner did he see the resolute and orderly ranks of "the
rioters," the cordon of police, the helpless (and perhaps purposely
helpless) chief of police, and the general expectation of which he was
the object, than all the blood rushed to his heart. With a pale face he
stepped out of his carriage.

"Caps off!" he said breathlessly and hardly audibly. "On your knees!"
he squealed, to the surprise of every one, to his own surprise too, and
perhaps the very unexpectedness of the position was the explanation of
what followed. Can a sledge on a switchback at carnival stop short as it
flies down the hill? What made it worse, Andrey Antonovitch had been all
his life serene in character, and never shouted or stamped at anyone;
and such people are always the most dangerous if it once happens that
something sets their sledge sliding downhill. Everything was whirling
before his eyes.

"Filibusters!" he yelled still more shrilly and absurdly, and his voice
broke. He stood, not knowing what he was going to do, but knowing
and feeling in his whole being that he certainly would do something
directly.

"Lord!" was heard from the crowd. A lad began crossing himself; three or
four men actually did try to kneel down, but the whole mass moved three
steps forward, and suddenly all began talking at once: "Your
Excellency... we were hired for a term... the manager... you mustn't
say," and so on and so on. It was impossible to distinguish anything.

Alas! Andrey Antonovitch could distinguish nothing: the flowers were
still in his hands. The riot was as real to him as the prison carts
were to Stepan Trofimovitch. And flitting to and fro in the crowd
of "rioters" who gazed open-eyed at him, he seemed to see Pyotr
Stepanovitch, who had egged them on--Pyotr Stepanovitch, whom he hated
and whose image had never left him since yesterday.

"Rods!" he cried even more unexpectedly. A dead silence followed.

From the facts I have learnt and those I have conjectured, this must
have been what happened at the beginning; but I have no such exact
information for what followed, nor can I conjecture it so easily. There
are some fac