"That's right. It has a tail as long as that."
"Come man, none of your tales now. Do you take me for a fool? I know a thing or two about the microscope myself."
"But I tell you it has. I aught to know better. That's the very first thing I saw under the microscope."
At this moment Kropotkin ran past them unnoticed, and tho usually much interested in convex lenses, took absolutely no part in the animated argument.
On gaining the street he was dumfounded to see that the huge man who occupied the carriage wore a military cap. The unhappy thought came to him that he had been betrayed. But on running nearer he saw it was a friend.
"Jump in! Jump in!" cried this modern Mikoula Selaninovich in a terrible voice, calling him a vile name. Leaning over to the coachman, he shoved a revolver in his face, screaming, "Gallop! Gallop! I will kill you, you——!!" using language abusive enuf to have made every foul-mouthed cossack in the cavalry stare in mute admiration.
Springing into the air from a forefoot, the beautiful horse—a famous trotter named Barbar—flew along as if it were shod not with steel but with wings. When the cause of Revolution is triumphant, this flying quadruped should receive a statue of purest gold, for two years later it rendered another magnificent service to the movement by bearing to safety the Nihilist Stepniak, after he helped assassinate the monstrous Mezentsov—murderer of many.[41]
Like lightning it leapt thru a narrow lane; they entered the immense Nevsky Prospect; they turned into a side-street; Kropotkin ran up a stair-case; the smiling comrade-coachman drove away. At the top of the steps waiting with painful anxiety was his sister-in-law. Physiologists claim it is impossible to do two things at one instant, but Kropotkin says that when he fell into her arms, she laughed and cried at once, and at the same time bade him change his clothes and crop his beard. Ten minutes later, he and his muscular Mikoula left the house, and took a cab. About an hour after, the house was searched, but as Kropotkin was not there, and it was necessary to arrest someone, the police took his sister and his sister-in-law.
Kropotkin was puzzled where to spend the time till evening, but his big friend knew. He called out to the cabman, "To Donon!" which has the same significance in Saint Petersburg that Delmonico has in New York, or Cecil in London, or Doree in Paris, or Bristol in Berlin, or Sacher in Vienna.
The decision was wise, for the police searched the dirty slums, but not the swell West End. So Kropotkin, dressed in an elegant costume, entered the aristocratic restaurant, and as he walks thru the halls flooded with light and crowded with guests, let us fill the biggest bumper with the richest wine, and quaff congratulations to the noblest prince that was ever imprisoned—and escaped.