The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching riot were becoming louder and louder. Many Jewish shops were closed. Taverns serving as stations for stage lines were crowded with people begging to be taken away from the city before it was too late.
The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers of the several Jewish districts were organised into so many sections, and a signal system was perfected by which the various sections were to communicate with each other. The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while the Defence Guard would be sober and acting according to a well-considered plan. The Guard was spoiling for a fight.
The Nihilists “on picket duty” were strolling around the streets.
Troops were held in readiness and placards had been posted forbidding people to assemble in the streets. Having ordered this, Governor Boulatoff announced himself ill and in need of a fortnight’s leave of absence. When a delegation implored him to postpone the journey, he replied curtly that all had been done to insure order. He was in bad spirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.
He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime of the same day the town was full of sinister rumours. One of these was about the poisoning of twelve Christian wells by Jews.
A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated though carefully shined boots and with a red nose, stood in front of one of the governor’s placards forbidding people to congregate in the streets, with a crowd of illiterate Gentiles about him.
“‘So by an All High ukase,’” he pretended to read, “‘all people of the orthodox Christian faith are hereby ordered to attack the Jews, destroy their homes and shops, tear their pillows and drink their vodka and wine, take from them all they have plundered from Christians and administer a drubbing to them.’”
As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin solemnity.
“Aye, the day of reckoning hath come,” he went on. “Let not a man of that unchristian tribe escape. Let the blood of Jesus and of his followers be avenged.” Here, however, he spoiled it all by suddenly breaking off with a grin of inebriate roguishness.
The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man philosophically.