He knows in advance which words will have the greatest effect, which would provoke the most bitter resentment. And the more extreme, the more painful his words are, the firmer and stronger is his voice, the slower his speech, the more challenging his tone. He speaks a sentence, then he stops to wait till the storm is over, then he repeats his assertion, with sharper intonation and with more disdain in his tone. Only his eyes become more nervous, and a peculiar disquieting fire is blazing in them.
This time he does not speak; he reads a written declaration. He reads it with pauses, sometimes accentuating the words, sometimes passing over them quickly, but all the time he is aware of the effect and waits for a response.
His voice is the voice of a prophet, a preacher:
"Petrograd is in danger! The Revolution is in danger! The people are in danger!" ...
He is a stranger on the platform, and yet—electric currents flow from him to his surroundings, creating sincere though primitive enthusiasm on one side, on the other anger and spite. He opens vast perspectives before the naïve faithful masses:
"Long live an immediate, honest, democratic peace!"
"All power to the Workmen's Councils! All the land to the people!"