Again the dead throng moved on. A governor passed by. All his figure breathed might and majesty. Yet hardly awake, he grumbled:
“Make way for the Russian Governor! I’ll have no patience with you. I will not permit it! You cannot frighten me. What! Feed the hungry, you say?”
He appeared, as it were, to awaken at these words; he looked around him and said in great astonishment, as he shrugged his shoulders:
“What a strange disorder! How did I get into this crowd? Where is the police?”
Then he suddenly bawled out:
“Let the Cossacks come!”
In response to the Governor’s cry a detachment of Cossacks came flying. Without noticing Trirodov and the children, they swept along past them and savagely flourished their nagaikas.[17] The dead, pressed from behind by the Cossacks’ horses, became a confused, wavering mass, and answered with malignant laughter to the blows of the nagaikas upon their lifeless bodies.
The grey witch sat down on a near-by stone and shook with her hideous, creaking laughter.