My mother, who had married as her second husband an officer in a regiment stationed near us, received news of the trouble just at the moment when we were starting to drive into town. But she rather pooh-poohed the warning, until she saw for herself that the report was not exaggerated. We first encountered people fleeing through the fields, and, when at last we reached civilisation, we found the town in a state of confusion. Windows were broken, Jewish shops pillaged, and the leaders, regardless of the protesting Hebrews, seized their goods and distributed them broadcast to the mob. The black and white praying robes peculiar to the Jews were in special request, as pieces of these, worn next to the skin, were supposed to render the wearer immune from marsh fever.
Next day, when I was walking in the Park, I found myself close to the walled-in right of way which traversed it, and, to my surprise and horror, I heard the passers-by giving vent to most undreamt-of declarations. “It’s the Jews _now_,” said someone, uttering a curse, “but wait until the next time. We have our orders: soon it will be the turn of the landed proprietors!”
The speaker spoke the truth. Some days later fires and pillage broke out around my home, and, from the terrace at Revovka, we could see an ever widening circle of flame, and our peasants informed us that, most assuredly, Revovka would suffer next. But we escaped, although the house of Madame Tchebotaiff, a great landowner and Revolutionist, was one of the first to be destroyed. She was afterwards sent to Siberia, a rather ironical form of justice, I am inclined to think!
When all was calm, the Duma came into existence, in which representatives of every class met in Parliament for the first time. Troops were sent to punish the peasants, and many of them were flogged by the soldiers. Our peasants were not included amongst the offenders. The idea of whipping human beings was repellent to me, and, girl though I was, I felt that we, as a class, were responsible for the existence of many evils, and that it lay with us to try and remedy them. But whipping was applied to the guilty as the most effectual and the most easily understood antidote against rebellion: it is a barbarous punishment--in English eyes it must seem _utterly_ so; but these whippings were as naught compared with the savagery and super-refinement of torture inflicted later by the whipped upon the whippers.