said that
he could at once arrange that I should receive 80% of my money and
the contents in the safe, out of which 10% should be paid to some
mysterious commissary. "I advise you to take it. The appetites are
growing, and perhaps to-morrow it will be more,--50% or 60%." I wrote
out some kind of understanding, by which I sold my rights on the
10th of October to a certain Kagajitsky. That was all fake, as my
arrangement was made about the 23rd of November, I guess.

My ticket, for which they asked me 12,000 rubles, was obtained through
the cook's sweetheart, and I left Petrograd on the 6th for Moscow on
the usual 12:30, and arrived uneventfully at the depot in Moscow next
morning at about 10:30.

On the stairs of the Nikolaevsky depot I stopped. Where was I going?
In fact I had never thought of it. I had no place, no destination, no
desires--nothing. Perhaps only one desire, to avenge myself and all of
us.

So I hesitated, for in Moscow they had been shooting right and left
for the past week, persecuting the burjoois and officers. I had never
felt so helpless and so unnecessary to myself and to others as on this
snowy morning in Moscow. Besides, all of the way from Petrograd to
Moscow I had had a hideous headache and chills, and I was in a fog of
indifference.

"Good morning, sir," said an astonishingly polite voice behind me, "I
congratulate you upon a safe arrival."

I turned around and saw a man of rather short stature, cleanly shaven,
and politely smiling with the whole width of his mouth.

"Good morning," I said, "I cannot place you, but you seem familiar to
me, I am sure."

"That's due to my former occupation, your Excellency. I am Goroshkin,
the usher from the Ekaterinensky Theatre. So sorry to apprehend of
your sorrow, Sir, in connection with her Excellency's death."

This man, Goroshkin, was a real friend to me, although I hardly
recollected him. We never used to pay much attention to the ushers!

There was no use in trying to go to a hotel with my appearance of
a gentleman and my pockets filled with money; my fever and my
indifference were growing; I had no desire to do anything for myself.
I think that Goroshkin understood me and the state of my mind when
he said, "May I venture to offer Your Excellency my humble house, and
perhaps call a doctor?"

This is as much as I remember of the next fortnight. I had a terrible
attack of typhus,--and when communists were killing the boys from the
military s