10: Filibusters. A Fatal Morning
I
The event that occurred on our way was also of a surprising sort. But I must tell everything in order. An hour before Stepan Trofimovich and I went out, a crowd of people, workers from the Shpigulin factory, about seventy of them, maybe more, moved through town and was noticed with curiosity by many. They moved decorously, almost silently, in purposeful order. It was afterwards asserted that these seventy were delegates chosen from all the factory workers, of whom the Shpigulins had up to nine hundred, to go to the governor and, in view of the owners' absence, seek justice from him against the owners' manager, who, while closing down the factory and dismissing the workers, had brazenly cheated them all—a fact no longer open to any doubt. Others among us deny to this day that they were delegates, insisting that seventy people would be too many for a delegation, and that the crowd simply consisted of the most resentful ones, who came to plead only for themselves, so that there never had been any general factory "riot" such as later caused so much clamor. A third group passionately affirms that these seventy men were not simple rioters, but decidedly political ones—that is, that being some of the most violent ones to begin with, they had been further aroused by none other than the anonymous leaflets. In short, whether or not there was any influence or instigation is still not known precisely. My personal opinion is that the workers had not read any anonymous leaflets, and that even if they had, they would not have understood a word of them, for the sole reason that those who write them, for all the baldness of their style, write extremely obscurely. But since the factory men really were in bad straits—and the police, to whom they had appealed, did not want to enter into their grievance—what could be more natural than their idea of going in a crowd "to the general himself," if possible, even with a petition on their head, lining up decorously in front of his porch, and, the moment he appeared, all falling on their knees and crying out as if to providence itself? To my mind there is no need here either for a riot, or even for delegates, because this is an old, historical method; from time immemorial the Russian people have loved having a talk with "the general himself," for the sheer pleasure of it, in fact, and even regardless of what the end of such a talk might be.
And that is why I am fully convinced that although Pyotr Stepanovich, Liputin, perhaps someone else as well, perhaps even Fedka, had been shuttling among the factory workers earlier (since there exist quite firm indications of this circumstance) and had talked with them, it was certainly with no more than two or three, or say five, only as a trial, and that nothing came of this talk. As regards rioting, even if the factory workers did understand anything of their propaganda, they must certainly have stopped listening at once, seeing it was a stupid matter and altogether unsuitable. Fedka was another matter: it seems he had far better luck than Pyotr Stepanovich. In the town fire that followed three days later, as has now been indisputably revealed, two factory workers did indeed take part along with Fedka, and afterwards, a month later, three more former factory workers in our district were seized, also for robbery and arson. But if Fedka had actually managed to lure them over to direct, immediate action, it was again only these five, because nothing of the sort was heard about any of the others.
Be that as it may, the whole crowd of workers finally arrived at the little square in front of the governor's house, and lined up decorously and silently. Then they gaped at the porch and started waiting. I was told that as soon as they installed themselves, they immediately took off their hats, that is, perhaps half an hour before the arrival of the master of the province, who, as if by design, happened to be away from home at the moment. The police made their appearance at once, first as isolated phenomena, then in the fullest possible complement; they began threateningly, of course, with an order to disperse. But the workers stood there like a flock of sheep at a fence, and answered laconically that they wanted "the general hisself"; firm resolve was evident. The unnatural shouting ceased; it quickly yielded to pondering, mysteriously whispered instructions, and a stern, worried preoccupation that furrowed the official brow. The police chief preferred to wait for the arrival of von Lembke himself. It is nonsense that he came flying at full speed with a troika and supposedly started fighting before he got out of his droshky. Our governor did indeed fly and liked to fly around in his droshky with its yellow back, and as his "outrunners driven to debauchery" got wilder and wilder, to the delight of all the merchants in the shopping arcade, he would stand up in his droshky, rise to his full height, holding on to a special strap attached to the side, and, stretching his right arm into space like a monument, would thus survey the town. But in the present case he did not start fighting, and though he really could not do without strong language as he came flying off his droshky, he did it solely so as not to lose popularity. It is still greater nonsense that soldiers with bayonets were brought in, and that a message was sent somewhere by telegraph about dispatching artillery and Cossacks: these are tales that their inventors themselves no longer believe. It is also nonsense that barrels of water were brought from the firehouse and used to drench the people. Quite simply, Ilya Ilyich shouted hot-headedly that no one would escape without getting his feet wet; this must have been turned into barrels, which thus made their way into the reports of the metropolitan newspapers. The most correct version, one must suppose, was that the crowd was first surrounded by all the policemen who happened to be on hand, and a messenger was then sent to Lembke, an officer from the first precinct, who proceeded to fly down the road to Skvoreshniki in the police chief's droshky, knowing that von Lembke had set out for there half an hour earlier in his carriage...
But, I confess, an unresolved question still remains for me: how did it come about that a mere, that is, an ordinary crowd of petitioners— seventy men, it's true—should be turned, right from the first go, from the first step, into a riot that threatened to shake the foundations? Why did Lembke himself seize on this idea when he arrived twenty minutes later, following the messenger? I would suppose (but again this is a personal opinion) that Ilya Ilyich, who was chummy with the manager, even found it profitable to present the crowd to von Lembke in this light, precisely so as not to bring on a real investigation into the matter; and it was Lembke himself who had given him this idea. Over the past two days he had had two mysterious and exceptional talks with him—quite confused talks, incidentally—from which Ilya Ilyich had nevertheless made out that the front office was firmly set on the idea of the tracts, and of the Shpigulin workers being incited by someone to social rioting, and set on it to such a degree that they themselves might regret it if this inciting turned out to be nonsense. "He wants to distinguish himself somehow in Petersburg," thought our cunning Ilya Ilyich as he was leaving von Lembke. "Well, that plays right into my hands."
But I am convinced that poor Andrei Antonovich would not have wished for a riot even for the sake of distinguishing himself. He was an extremely responsible official, who until his marriage had dwelt in innocence. And was it his fault if, instead of innocent government firewood and a likewise innocent Minchen, a forty-year-old princess had raised him to herself? I know almost positively that it was after this same fatal morning that the first traces became manifest of the condition which is said to have sent poor Andrei Antonovich to a certain special institution in Switzerland, where he is now supposed to be gathering new strength. But if one can merely allow that, precisely after that morning, the manifest facts of anything became apparent, then it is possible, in my opinion, to allow that manifestations of similar facts could already have occurred the day before as well, though not so manifestly. It is known to me from rumors of a most intimate sort (well, suppose that later on Yulia Mikhailovna, no longer triumphant, but