To say nothing of all the millions of work-days which were wasted on these festivities, of the wholesale drunkenness of all the participants, which was encouraged by all the powers, to say nothing of the insipidity of the speeches made, the maddest and most cruel things were done, and no one paid any attention to them.
Thus several dozens of men were crushed to death, and no one found it necessary to mention this fact. One correspondent wrote that a Frenchman told him at a ball that now there could hardly be found a woman in Paris who would not be false to her duties, in order to satisfy the wishes of some Russian sailor—and all this passed by unnoticed, as something that ought to be. There occurred cases of distinct madness. Thus one woman, dressing herself in a garment of the colours of the Franco-Russian flags, waited for the sailors and, exclaiming, "Vive la Russie!" jumped from the bridge into the river and was drowned.
Women in general played in these festivities a prominent part and even guided the men. Besides throwing flowers and all kinds of ribbons, and offering presents and addresses, French women made for the Russian sailors and kissed them; some of them for some reason brought their children to them, to be kissed by them, and when the Russian sailors complied with their wish, all persons present went into ecstasies and wept.
This strange excitement was so infectious that, as one correspondent tells, an apparently absolutely sound Russian sailor, after two days of contemplation of what took place around him, in the middle of the day jumped from the ship into the sea and, swimming, shouted, "Vive la France!" When he was taken aboard and asked why he had done so, he replied that he had made a vow that in honour of France he would swim around the ship.
Thus the undisturbed excitement grew and grew, like a ball of rolling wet snow, and finally reached such dimensions that not only the persons present, not only predisposed, weak-nerved, but even strong, normal men fell a prey to the general mood and became abnormally affected.
I remember how I, absent-mindedly reading one of these descriptions of the solemnity of the reception of the sailors, suddenly felt a feeling, akin to meekness of spirit, even a readiness for tears, communicated to me, so that I had to make an effort to overcome this feeling.
Malévannians
Photogravure from Photograph