“Wait!” I whispered, “perhaps Nina is here somewhere.”
Grogoff was standing with another man on a small improvised platform just outside the gates of the Bourse.
As the soldiers came out (many of them were leaving now on the full tide of their recent emotions) Grogoff and his friend caught them, held them, and proceeded to instruct their minds.
I caught some of Grogoff’s sentences: “Tovaristchi!” I heard him cry, “Comrades! Listen to me. Don’t allow your feelings to carry you away! You have serious responsibilities now, and the thing for you to do is not to permit sentiment to make you foolish. Who brought you into this war? Your leaders? No, your old masters. They bled you and robbed you and slaughtered you to fill their own pockets. Who is ruling the world now? The people to whom the world truly belongs? No, the Capitalists, the money-grubbers, the old thieves like Nicholas who is now under lock and key... Capitalists... England, France... Thieves, Robbers....
“Belgium? What is Belgium to you? Did you swear to protect her people? Does England, who pretends such loving care for Belgium, does she look after Ireland? What about her persecution of South Africa? Belgium? Have you heard what she did in the Congo?...”
As the men came, talking, smiling, wiping their eyes, they were caught by Grogoff’s voice. They stood there and listened. Soon they began to nod their heads. I heard them muttering that good old word “Verrno! Verrno!” again. The crowd grew. The men began to shout their approval. “Aye! it’s true,” I heard a solder near me mutter. “The English are thieves”; and another “Belgium?... After all I could not understand a word of what that little fat man said.”
I heard no more, but I did not wonder now at the floods that were rising and rising, soon to engulf the whole of this great country. The end of this stage of our story was approaching for all of us.
We three had stood back, a little in the shadow, gazing about to see whether we could hail a cab.
As we waited I took my last look at Grogoff, his stout figure against the purple sky, the masts of the ships, the pale tumbling river, the black line of the farther shore. He stood, his arms waving, his mouth open, the personification of the disease from which Russia was suffering.
A cab arrived. I turned, said as it were, my farewell to Grogoff and everything for which he stood, and went.