I quite appreciated the humor of the situation, and I guess Mishka did so, too, for more than once I saw his deep-set eyes twinkle just for a moment, as he discreetly translated my remarks, and, at the same time, cordially endorsed our tyrants' freely expressed opinions concerning myself.
"You have done well, 'Herr Gould,' yes, very well," he condescended to say, when we were at last through with the troublesome business. "We are safe enough so far, though for my part I shall be glad to turn my back on this hole, where the trouble may begin at any moment."
"God knows," he answered evasively, with a characteristic movement of his broad shoulders. "Can you not see for yourself that there is trouble brewing?"
I had seen as much. The whole moral atmosphere seemed surcharged with electricity; and although as yet there was no actual disturbance, beyond the individual acts of ruffianism that are everyday incidents in all Russian towns, the populace, the sailors, and the soldiery eyed each other with sullen menace, like so many dogs, implacably hostile, but not yet worked up to fighting pitch. A few weeks later the storm burst, and Riga reeked with fire and carnage, as did many another city, town, and village, from Petersburg to Odessa.
I discerned the same ominous state of things--the calm before the storm--at Dunaburg and Wilna, but it was not until we had left the railroad and were well on our two days' cross-country ride to Zostrov that I became acquainted with two important ingredients in that "seething pot" of Russian affairs,--to use Mishka's apt simile. Those two ingredients were the peasantry and the Jews.
Hitherto I had imagined, as do most foreigners, whose knowledge of Russia is purely superficial, and does not extend beyond the principal cities, that what is termed the revolutionary movement was a conflict between the governing class,--the bureaucracy which dominates every one from the Tzar himself, an autocrat in name only, downwards,--and the democracy. The latter once was actively represented only by the various Nihilist organizations, but now includes the majority of the urban population, together with many of the nobles who, like Anne's kindred, have suffered, and still suffer so sorely under the iron rule of cruelty, rapacity, and oppression that has made Russia a byword among civilized nations since the days of Ivan the Terrible. But now I realized that the movement is rendered infinitely complex by the existence of two other conflicting forces,--the _moujiks_ and the Jews. The bureaucracy indiscriminately oppresses and seeks to crush all three sections; the democracy despairs of the _moujiks_ and hates the Jews, though it accepts their financial help; while the _moujiks_ distrust every one, and also hate the Jews, whom they murder whenever they get the chance.