THE LITILE CHAPEL OF THE GUARDS
Rouletabille took a long walk which led him to the Troitsky Bridge, then, re-descending the Naberjnaia, he reached the Winter Palace.
He seemed to have chased away all preoccupation, and took a child's pleasure in the different aspects of the life that characterizes the city of the Great Peter.He stopped before the Winter Palace, walked slowly across the square where the prodigious monolith of the Alexander Column rises from its bronze socket, strolled between the palace and the colonnades, passed under an immense arch:
everything seemed Cyclopean to him, and he never had felt so tiny, so insignificant.None the less he was happy in his insignificance, he was satisfied with himself in the presence of these colossal things; everything pleased him this morning.The speed of the isvos, the bickering humor of the osvotchicks, the elegance of the women, the fine presences of the officers and their easy naturalness under their uniforms, so opposed to the wooden posturing of the Berlin military men whom he had noticed at the "Tilleuls" and in the Friederichstrasse between two trains.Everything enchanted him - the costume even of the moujiks, vivid blouses, the red shirts over the trousers, the full legs and the boots up to the knees, even the unfortunates who, in spite of the soft atmosphere, were muffled up in sheepskin coats, all impressed him favorably, everything appeared to him original and congenial.
Order reigned in the city.The guards were polite, decorative and superb in bearing.The passers-by in that quarter talked gayly among themselves, often in French, and had manners as civilized as anywhere in the world.Where, then, was the Bear of the North? He never had seen bears so well licked.Was it this very city that only yesterday was in revolution? This was certainly the Alexander Park where troops a few weeks before had fired on children who had sought refuge in the trees, like sparrows.Was this the very pavement where the Cossacks had left so many bodies? Finally he saw before him the Nevsky Prospect, where the bullets rained like hail not long since upon a people dressed for festivities and very joyous.Nichevo! Nichevo! All that was so soon forgotten.They forgot yesterday as they forget to-morrow.The Nihilists? Poets, who imagined that a bomb could accomplish anything in that Babylon of the North more important than the noise of its explosion! Look at these people who pass.They have no more thought for the old attack than for those now preparing in the shadow of the "tracktirs."Happy men, full of serenity in this bright quarter, who move about their affairs and their pleasures in the purest air, the lightest, the most transparent on earth.No, no; no one knows the joy of mere breathing if he has not breathed the air there, the finest in the north of the world, which gives food and drink of beautiful white eau-de-vie and yellow pivo, and strikes the blood and makes one a beast vigorous and joyful and fatalistic, and mocks at the Nihilists and, as well, at the ten thousand eyes of the police staring from under the porches of houses, from under the skulls of dvornicks - all police, the dvornicks; all police, also the joyous concierges with extended hands.Ah, ah, one mocks at it all in such air, provided one has roubles in one's pockets, plenty of roubles, and that one is not besotted by reading those extraordinary books that preach the happiness of all humanity to students and to poor girl-students too.Ah, ah, seed of the Nihilists, all that!
These poor little fellows and poor little girls who have their heads turned by lectures that they cannot digest! That is all the trouble, the digestion.The digestion is needed.Messieurs the commercial travelers for champagne, who talk together importantly in the lobbies of the Grand Morskaia Hotel and who have studied the Russian people even in the most distant cities where champagne is sold, will tell you that over any table of hors-d'oeuvres, and will regulate the whole question of the Revolution between two little glasses of vodka, swallowed properly, quickly, elbow up, at a single draught, in the Russian manner.Simply an affair of digestion, they tell you.Who is the fool that would dare compare a young gentleman who has well digested a bottle of champagne or two, and another young man who has poorly digested the lucubrations of, who shall we say?
- the lucubrations of the economists? The economists? The economists! Fools who compete which can make the most violent statements! Those who read them and don't understand them go off like a bomb! Your health! Nichevo! The world goes round still, doesn't it?
Discussion political, economic, revolutionary, and other in the room where they munch hors-d'oeuvres! You will hear it all as you pass through the hotel to your chamber, young Rouletabille.Get quickly now to the home of Koupriane, if you don't wish to arrive there at luncheon-time; then you would have to put off these serious affairs until evening.
The Department of Police.Massive entrance, heavily guarded, a great lobby, halls with swinging doors, many obsequious schwitzars on the lookout for tips, many poor creatures sitting against the walls on dirty benches, desks and clerks, brilliant boots and epaulets of gay young officers who are telling tales of the Aquarium with great relish.
"Monsieur Rouletabille! Ah, yes.Please be seated.Delighted, M.Koupriane will be very happy to receive you, but just at this moment he is at inspection.Yes, the inspection of the police dormitories in the barracks.We will take you there.His own idea!
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Koupriane.I shall be delighted."
"I also," said Rouletabille, who put a rouble into the honorable functionary's hand.
"Permit me to precede you."
Bows and salutes.For two roubles he would have walked obsequiously before him to the end of the world.
