Chapter 8

VIII

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